I just finished binging the 2024 UK mini-series Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It's based on true events, and I have so many thoughts!
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#TV#UK #drama#BasedOnATrueStory#MrBates#GigEconomy#OutSourcing#AI#GovtIT
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For a start, it's an early example of the gig economy. Where instead of being employees, running a publicly-owned post office, local postmasters were forced to operate as independent small business owners. To which the UK Post Office was a monopsony supplier of postal services, under the terms of a take-it-or-leave-it contract. Lumping the postmasters with full financial and legal liability.
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It's also a classic example of "bossware" gone mad. Because despite UK postmasters being contracted as independent businesses, the Post Office imposed a centralised computer system on all of them. This service too was supplied under contract, by the UK wing of Fujitsu corporation.
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Imposing this bossware system meant that the UK Post Office didn't have to trust the postmasters with the running of their own post office. But to avoid trusting the decent, honest people who remained or became postmasters, even under those conditions, they had to trust Fujitsu corporation. With the running of *all* post offices.
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Spoiler alert! Fujitsu turned out to be deeply untrustworthy. But instead of trying to hold this giant tech corporation accountable for the failures of the system they provided, it was easier for the Post Office corporation to take their pound of flesh out of postmasters who'd done nothing wrong. Thousands were bankrupted, hundreds were coerced into plea bargains that resulted in criminal convictions - even prison time - despite a total lack of evidence of wrongdoing.
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