Last week, the Pensions Regulator finally coughed up its 171 page General Code.

You can download your copy here

It tells us to “do good not bad” and it  arrived as the nation stood in horror at what Fujitsu, the Post Office and the British Legal System had done to thousands of sub-postmasters.

Our horror was partly down to our being the owner of two out of three of those entities and reliant on the third (Fujitsu) not just for the running of the Post Office but of much else.

This blog is about how these entities have found a way to insulate themselves from the people they serve , through ways of expression that have nothing to do with common sense. They all had codes of good practice but ended up doing bad and articulated bad as good using the corporate double-speak that legitimises inhuman vindictive cruelty.

It is interesting to see how the governing classes are trying to find ways to say “sorry”.

Suppose someone came up to you and asked you what you’d learned from the public’s reaction to the publicity around the Post Office scandal . Would the following be an “acceptable apology”

The scandal underscores the delicate equilibrium between technology and human elements in business, highlighting the indispensable importance of independence in our operations and practices. It also reinforces the need to prioritise people in our decision-making processes. These insights are vital not only for refining our operational workflows but also for cultivating ethical and responsible leadership in our increasingly technology-centric world.

I won’t embarrass the purveyor of this Corporate BS on Linked in by naming him/her.

The point is that most of “us” read this stuff as if it weren’t corporate BS and by “us” I mean those who like to think we are “C-Suite”.

We also own the Pensions Regulator and co-own a pension system that needs good practice.

Which is why Alan Bates has a great deal to offer readers of TPR’s General Governance Code.

Do good not bad

The problem with the “computer says guilty” conspiracy between Fujitsu and the Post Office was that it entirely divorced itself from any common sense to the point where the only human responses left to the viewers were to laugh or cry.

“Do good not bad” is a pretty sound moral creed that I imagine would have been acceptable from the pulpit of the St Albans’ churches , Paula Vennells preached from. Yet she consistently instructed her team to do bad not good , to protect the Post Office brand and the impossible construct it had created around Horizon’s infallibility.

Even in the early days of systems development, there must have been some circumspection along the lines of “garbage in garbage out” (GIGO). Computer Systems are only as good as the people who design, code and test them. Because you do this at Fujitsu or the Post Office, does not make it alright. There is no corporate infallibility, there is no divine right of codes, truth and justice need to happen to human beings.

I think that’s what the writer of the clumsy words is trying to say, the trouble is he/she is unable to find the simple language that so affected us when we watched Alan Bates v the Post Office.

The most effective argument for putting humans back at the centre of the discussion on law and ethics, has been put forward by David Allen Green in a blog with the long but easily understood title

How the legal system made it so easy for the Post Office to destroy the lives of the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses – and how the legal system then made it so hard for them to obtain justice

The blog is effective because it talks about legal process without using the language of legal process, instead it relies on touchstones of morality and business ethics such as Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol. Dickens’ magic was to use words that people understood to help them understand what has become obscured by the likes of the  171 page TPR General Governance Code.

One of the comments to the blog quotes William Faulkner

A passage in a short story by William Faulkner always comes to mind when the topic of law and justice arises:
–‘I’m interested in truth,’ the sheriff said.
–‘So am I,’ Uncle Gavin said. ‘It’s so rare. But I am more interested in justice and human beings.’
— ‘Aint truth and justice the same thing?’ the sheriff said.
— ‘Since when?’ Uncle Gavin said. ‘In my time I have seen truth that was anything under the sun but just, and I have seen justice using tools and instruments I wouldn’t want to touch with a ten-foot fence rail.’

You cannot write “truth” and “justice” into governance codes, these concepts either exist in organisations or they don’t and the more you try to tie them down in “bibles” like the Pension Regulator’s General Code. Having read the 171 pages , I know how to structure a governance document to satisfy the Pensions Regulator but I am not an instrument of truth and justice.

Words like “sincerity“, “authenticity” are bandied around with “alacrity”, but they are meaningless concepts unless they result in truth and justice. The Post Office scandal is a wake up call to everyone to look to their personal morals and ethics. Stones will have to be cast but it should be Alan Bates and not the C-Suite who should throw them.