Are we all ready for week 2?

Hi there secret emailers

Forgive the radio silence on Friday – I had a job which was nothing to do with the trial to complete. If I am offered jobs on days during this trial when the court isn’t sitting, I might take them, in order to make the money you very kindly donated stretches further.

Weekends are a write-off, literally. I spent Saturday at a family gathering and most of today marshalling the various mini-Wallises to their Remembrance commitments.

This blog post is just to mark your card for this coming week.

Pam Stubbs will continue to be cross-examined by the Post Office’s QC, David Cavender, but from what he was saying on Thursday, I don’t suspect it will be long before he has finished. The remaining Lead Claimants – Mohammad Sabir, Naushad Abdulla, Elizabeth Stockdale and Louise Dar are completely unknown to me, so what they have to say will be interesting.

I think the live tweets are going down well, and serve a purpose. You’re basically getting a blow-by-blow account, which I think is a better approach than taking notes and then writing up the day for the postofficetrial.com blog as per a match report.

The problem this creates for me is that when the judge calls it a day at around 4.30pm, I then have to start writing the match report essentially from scratch. If this post is to offer anything more substantive than the live tweets, needs a bit of analysis or, at least, a slightly wider purview of the day.

Doing so in a way that is contemporaneous, accurate and fair (the legal obligation which affords me qualified privilege in reporting these court proceedings), quick and readable is what has been causing the stress, particularly when I have to be home in time to fulfil another family commitment (air cadets fireworks night tomorrow, folks). Writing a blog post on a packed commuter train only works if I can get a seat, but leaving writing a blog post until late in the evening is not exactly what journalism is all about. You paid to find out what happened in court. You shouldn’t have to wait too long after the end of it to read about it.

I’ll keep working on that.

In the meantime, there are some excellent journalists doing great things on this trial. I mentioned Sam Greenhill at the Daily Mail in my last secret email. I would also be grateful if you could follow the work of Karl Flinders from Computer Weekly, the august organ which actually broke this story way back in 2009. His latest article is here, and whilst Karl’s biggest audience is going to be for the Horizon Issues trial in March, he is so committed to this story he is basing his entire November schedule around the days the court is sitting in the hope he can write up as many days as possible.

I am also very grateful to everyone who has been inspired by the tweets and documents coming out of this trial to email, blog, share and tweet themselves. I read as much as I can.

Finally thanks again to everyone who has signed up and everyone who has forwarded the contents of this email and the blog to other people. It is having an effect, because every day for the last seven days I have received at least one donation via the website button, which means the army of secret emailers is growing at a lick. If things keep up at this rate I will be in Court 26 at the Rolls Building some time next year covering the third trial – the dates of which are going to be decided next week. Yes it really is happening….

One final thing – if you have ever had any meaningful contact with your MP about this story, please do forward them the official blog post emails (perhaps not these secret emails – they’re a bit chatty). They might appreciate it.

If they want to sign up to get their own email, let me know and I will make it so. I am sure you will appreciate the importance of ensuring powerful people know a) this trial is happening and b) how it is unfolding.

Day 3 of the Bates and others v Post Office GLO Common Issues trial starts at 10.30am GMT tomorrow. Let’s bring it.