POST OFFICE JAILED AN INNOCENT WOMAN Imagine. You run a small @PostOffice in Hull. You show up every day, you serve your community, you do the job. Then one day a computer program called Horizon decides you owe £59,000 that never existed. A computer program with a known glitch problem. Post Office didn't check the software. It just marched Janet Skinner into court in 2007 and got her jailed for 9 months. She served 2 behind bars. She lost her house. She lost her job. She lost her name in the eyes of her own neighbours, all because nobody in a position of power fancied questioning a machine. Here's where any decent organisation would stop digging the hole ... The Post Office kept digging. A year after she walked out of prison, they hauled her back into court again, this time chasing her for "proceeds of crime." Proceeds of a crime she never committed, calculated by a system that couldn't add up in the first place. Bold strategy from the people who broke the calculator in the first place. Less than two weeks after that fresh nightmare finally ended, Janet's body gave out completely. Neurological collapse. Paralysed from the neck down. Doctors told her she'd never walk again. She spent a year in a wheelchair and two years learning to walk. She says her own immune system turned on her. Years of fighting a system that refused to admit fault, and in the end it was her own body that surrendered first. So how does this story end? With an apology? A cheque that actually matches what she lost? Of course not. In 2025, after everything, the compensation scheme handed her an offer worth around 15% of her claim. Janet called it an insult. I'd call it a joke, except nobody's laughing, least of all the people who wrote the offer letter from the comfort of a job that still exists. 9 months in prison for a bug. 2 years in a wheelchair for the stress of proving her innocence. A payout that wouldn't cover the damage to her health, let alone her life. And somewhere, the people who signed off on her prosecution are still drawing a pension. Nobody who signed off on any of this has lost a house, a job, or a night's sleep. They got promotions. She got a wheelchair and an insulting cheque. Accountability had every chance to show up here and chose not to.. SOURCES @BBCNews @itvnews and others.