Post Office Limited

There have been some less than stellar predictions made over the years.

In 1878, Sir William Preece, the chief engineer of the British Post Office said, "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not.

We have plenty of messenger boys." Albert Einstein said, "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.

It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." "We don't like their sound, and guitar groups are on the way out." The Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles in 1962.

The post office system then communicates with the bank system, which credits the value of the cash to the account linked to the card.

It is a simple system, which Post Office Limited, the state-owned company that controls the branches, says provides a crucial service to businesses and individuals otherwise cut off from banking services.

But the simplicity comes at a cost.

It has eliminated many of the checks that previously stopped criminals from laundering their cash.

Instead, it has been largely ignored The Post Office Horizon scandal burst into the public consciousness thanks to 2024's ITV drama, Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office.

But by that stage, it had been dragging on for two decades.

Post Office Limited wrongly prosecuted hundreds of its post office operatives, despite senior figures knowing that the computer program that supposedly showed they had been committing fraud was faulty.

Ex-post office operative Alan Bates' landmark victory against his former employers in 2019 forced the government to overturn his and others' convictions and to promise to pay hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation.

And one of the conclusions of the KC who published a report was that the system has a deep-seated cultural reluctance to accept it will on occasion make mistakes and that entirely innocent defendants will sometimes be convicted.

Of course, there was one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent history with the British Post Office scandal.

There will be no longer the same level of public trust in legal outcomes, presumably.

The CCRC took a huge hammering and public confidence in it was hugely undermined by the Malkinson case and the report by Chris Henley, KC.