1. How would you describe the relationship that most people have with the post office in your country? What does it do well/not so well? Is it regarded as a good place to work?
2. How would you describe the relationship that most Britons have with the Royal Mail (Think red letter boxes, postmen/women as members of the community, a long-standing institution)?
2. How modern is the postal service in your country? Has it undergone many changes in recent years? Has its status changed at all; has technology/privatisation drastically altered how it works?
3. How do you imagine that the UK's postal services have changed in recent times?
Read article here: Post Office Injustice Reading
4. What is your reaction to the article?
5. What was Post Office management thinking between 2000 and 2014?
a) There must be a lot of dishonest sub-postmasters/mistresses in the world.
b) Computer says OK, and technology is always right.
c) It's not my department's problem.
6. What would you do if you were in a similar situation i.e. you are in a semi-autonomous position with a large organisation that believes you have done wrong?
7. Have you heard of any other instances where computer issues have caused injustices like this? What happened?
8. Do you trust the software programmes at your place of work? What would you do if you didn't? Should employees back up their work on alternative software programmes?
9. If there were a financial shortfall at work (through no fault of your own) would you try and 'plug the gap' with your own money?
10. Imprisonment, broken marriages, ruined reputations, poor health outcomes: You are the CEO of the Post Office. How do you now manage this situation?
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Situation
You are the Post Office's CEO. You are holding a press conference announcing the measures you are going to take to help remedy this situation. Announce them and answer the awaiting journalists' questions.
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11. Do you know any other real-life miscarriage of justice stories? What happened?
12. Do you know of any fictional miscarriage of justice stories? What happened? (Think Count of Monte Cristo.)
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Discuss quotes
"Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck."
--- Orson Welles
"Sometimes the wheels of justice grind slowly."
--- Terry Waite
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.”
― Mitch Ratcliffe
“Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity”
― Albert Einstein
Student Handout PDF: Post Office
Photo: SlWong