Educational Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The Real Story (2024)

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Title: Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The Real Story

Genre: Documentary

Director: Clare Richards

Cast: Toby Jones

Status: Released

Release: 2024-01-04

Runtime: 48

Plot: When Post Office subpostmasters up and down the country started to experience big shortfalls in their accounts, Post Office assumed they were stealing the money and prosecuted them. Hundred were given criminal convictions and many were sent to prison. Lives, marriages, reputations – all ruined. The shortfalls were in fact, a result of errors in the Post Office’s own IT system, known as Horizon. It was something the Post Office had always denied. For over twenty years, former subpostmaster Alan Bates has fought tirelessly for justice for all the subpostmasters who were so poorly treated by the brand they had loved. This is his story.
Movie information in first post provided by The Movie Database

This is a documentary series about the disgraceful, criminal and unethical behaviour of the UK Post Office towards its sub-postmasters. Accusing them of gross dishonesty, when it was the fault of the programming of their then new Horizon computer system, and the incompetent programming by Fujitsu.

At last count, at least four of the victims had committed suicide, many were wrongfully imprisoned and the UK government has paid out over £1 Bn in damages and compensation to date. The fallout is still ongoing.

I have, personally, been involved in this sort of cockup, both as a public servant, discovering such a mis-programming error, and as a victim of shoddy computer programming and staff misfeasance and/or dishonesty in my dealings with Centrelink here. I won 100% (i.e. no apportionment of blame, as is common here in the AAT), but it wrecked our lives for many years. The decision in our case changed the law in this country.

I was in tears several times while watching this docu-drama. It stirred up many unpleasant memories for me.

The Wikipedia article is well worth reading in full.
 
John, thanks for posting this as I've come across a few recent references to the Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office TV series but didn't catch that it was based on actual events.

After reading the "British Post Office Scandal" Wikipedia entry, it is staggering that an IT systems issue led to so many false criminal cases and was allowed to go for so many years.

Knowing now the background, I'm less interested in the TV series and more interested in seeing if I can find this documentary streaming anywhere.
 
John, thanks for posting this as I've come across a few recent references to the Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office TV series but didn't catch that it was based on actual events.

After reading the "British Post Office Scandal" Wikipedia entry, it is staggering that an IT systems issue led to so many false criminal cases and was allowed to go for so many years.

Knowing now the background, I'm less interested in the TV series and more interested in seeing if I can find this documentary streaming anywhere.
Kevin, while I don't normally go for docu-dramas, I can highly recommend this one.

Very much in point, with none of the usual histrionics.

There are three main articles, apart from the review above:



Can't find the other one ... I'm getting tired here.

Doh! It's the one you linked to!
 
Mr Bates vs. The Post Office (2024) Miniseries?
Yep, that's the one. For some reason I've been seeing several references to it all of sudden in the last few weeks but wasn't familiar with it other than at a really high level (UK post office, some type of scandal).

Until I saw this post from John about the documentary I didn't realize that the series was based on actual events. Reading up on it in Wikipedia, the scope of it is astounding.
 
A good movie is Percy (2020)
Percy Schmeiser, a third-generation farmer, gets sued by a corporate giant for allegedly using their patented seeds. With little resources to fight a legal battle, Percy joins forces with up-and-coming attorney Jackson Weaver and environmental activist Rebecca Salcau for a monumental case that leads all the way to the Supreme Court.
 
Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan Canada whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready Canola. Monsanto's position was that it didn't matter whether Schmeiser knew or not that his canola field was contaminated with the Roundup Ready gene, or whether or not he took advantage of the technology (he didn't); that he must pay Monsanto their Technology Fee of $15./acre.
 
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