Thoughts on being a sub Post Master

 

Credit: Myatt Antonia, ukposter.co.uk

The aphorisms I draw on to make my case:-

Where there is power, there is also abuse of power.

Most groups and organisations primarily exist to serve their own interest.

Most theft in the West is completely legal.

I have been listening to Nick Wallis radio 4 podcast called 'The Great Post Office Trial'.

In episode 12 (bonus section) Nick Wallis interviews Nick Read, the current CEO of the Post Office, having bumped into each other at the parliamentary enquiry at the Palace of Westminster.  Of course Nick Wallis had requested an interview with Post Office officials over many years, so he was very surprise when Nick Read agreed to speak.  The interview is fascinating because it exposes the fact that the abuse of power being investigated was demonstrably still present in the system.  Post office executives had been given substantial bonuses to reward them for their contributions in the public enquiry.  What is more, this had been stated in the Post Office Annual Report.  Some of the bonuses appear to be greater than the awards for damages offered to sub-post masters.

To me this sounded like a burglar being rewarded financially for confessing to guilt, though in this case it was for minimising guilt, to protect the organisation.

Nick Wallis has been able to show how powerful people were able to run roughshod over working-class men and women, often Asian, and assume that they would get away with it.  In the interview Nick Read seemed compelled to time and again say how awful and terrible the errors made against the sub-masters/mistresses were.  Nick Read, as with politicians, kept saying that his job was to clean up the culture of the Post Office, and that he needed to take the people who had made the mistakes with him.  This reminded me of the sentiments in Germany after the first world war.  Ok they lost, but they still regretted what had happened to them.

Nick Wallis was able to illuminate the shallowness of accountability, where the powerful do not lose their jobs, or suffer gross indignities, such as prosecution. 

All the compensation paid to victims will come from the public purse.  Nick Read referred in the interview to the compensation scheme needing to fair on the taxpayer, who would be footing the bill, as if we the listening public would then sympathise with the need to work to reduce individual claims.  It was acknowledged that if the Post Office was a private business (it is semi-private), it would have failed, and been replaced with something else long ago.  

It also struck me, that as someone who is paid from the public purse, the Post office scandal also provided lucrative work to many lawyer, all who ultimately are paid for from the public purse.   All this work would be unnecessary if systems were not allowed to misuse power.

How can power be kept in check?  I observed how the service I worked in was able to flourish when we worked in a multi-agency partnership.  We worked together in a mutually beneficial partnership covering common, shared aims. From a systems perspective, all we shared where the children.  The three agencies involved were able to maintain a focus on these aims, and were able to limit the propensity for our own self serving hidden and selfish agenda to dominate.   

Examples were- we functioned without waiting lists, we valued children even if they moved out of our area, we were interested in feedback and measured effectiveness.  we also published data about our service.  These are all things that as soon as the partnership was dissolved (due to 'austerity') we lost.

It is my view that more private companies should be run as worker's cooperatives.  Services require moderation at all levels.  If the people who were made to suffer had more power within the organisation, they would have been able to have greater influence over the way problems were solved.

The longer deceit is allowed to persist, the more it becomes essential to defend.  Catch it early and costly errors of justice can be limited.

Another question.  Did the computer errors give the post masters any cash, as well as take it away??