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624 points xbryanx | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.428s | source
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throw0101c ◴[] No.44531395[source]
The four-part mini-series Mr Bates vs The Post Office is worth checking out:

> A faulty IT system called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, creates apparent cash shortfalls that cause Post Office Limited to pursue prosecutions for fraud, theft and false accounting against a number of subpostmasters across the UK. In 2009, a group of these, led by Alan Bates, forms the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. The prosecutions and convictions are later ruled a miscarriage of justice at the conclusion of the Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd judicial case in 2019.[4][5]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Bates_vs_The_Post_Office

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ThisNameIsTaken ◴[] No.44531580[source]
What is particularly striking about the scandal is the impact of the mini-series. From what I understand (as a foreigner to the UK) is that it was the mini-series that sparked national interest in the case. Without it, those involved would still be in a bureaucratic and legal nightmare, in which all institutions rejected their innocence claims, and hardly anyone would have been held accountable. See also the "Impact" section on the linked wiki page.

It leaves me wondering how the situation would have been if it would have been a (dramaturgically) 'bad' series. It might have left those involved even worse of.

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1. duncans ◴[] No.44532022[source]
It's worth pointing out that Mr Bates vs The Post Office screened in early 2024. The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry was set up in 2020/2021 and the public hearings started in 2023.

So it may have looked like "it was TV what done it" but the wheels of justice were turning long before the show came out.

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2. penguin_booze ◴[] No.44533290[source]
Wheels; justice: all these are just weasel words. Litigation is an exclusive privilege of the rich. And prison, of the poor(er).
3. worik ◴[] No.44537196[source]
The Guardian was reporting this for years, that I saw

Private Eye too, I hear

The TV programme made it a political football