Lend me your ears…

Hi everyone

Just a quick one as I’ve bothered you enough over the last week.

Please do listen out for the next five episodes of The Great Post Office Trial, which will be broadcast at 1.45pm (after the World At One) every weekday next week.

They are just 15 minutes long and aim to tell the story of the scandal from the inside, using documents and witness evidence from the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry.

My thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed for the series and the dazzlingly good production team at Whistledown – especially Bob Nicholson, producer extraordinaire – who do most of the work.

Once each episode has been broadcast it will go up here on BBC Sounds (also home to all the other, older episodes). It will also drop as a podcast episode, too, so you can find it on your usual podcast platform.

Another compensation scheme

The government made a bizarre announcement last week. A new non-Horizon compensation scheme for Subpostmasters. This is a de facto recognition that the Post Office demanded money from Subpostmasters for reasons other than Horizon-related deficits. The big question is – were some Subpostmasters prosecuted and convicted as a result?

If so – where does that leave the CCRC and the Court of Appeal in its insistence it will only overturn convictions where Horizon evidence is “essential” to a case? Well – we don’t know, as we don’t know anything about the new compensation scheme other than the fact it is due to come into existence soon. Watch this space.

Other things

My piece on Elaine Cottam got a strong response on social media, and may well have brought some new secret-emailers into the fold. If that is the case – welcome and thank you for your generosity. Do make yourselves at home, we’re a reserved, but I like to think, friendly bunch.

I am going to be doing some more live talks in the New Year, mostly in April and May, but there is one which is fast approaching on Sunday 24 March at the Lichfield Garrick. Lichfield is a few miles north of Birmingham and tickets are already on sale. Please do come if you can!

Next week I’m going to put a few more dates up on the events page of the Post Office Scandal website. But I’ll make sure I tell you about them via this newsletter, too.

Thanks

A massive thank you to everyone who continues to send me information or brings it to my attention on twitter. I obviously keep a keen eye out (and a keen ear to the ground) for anything Post Office-related, but I do miss things. I’m pretty sure I would have missed Thursday’s govt announcement if someone hadn’t sent me a link via email.

I am always grateful to be alerted to a new developments in the story and I do read every single email and message I get sent. And I do appreciate them, even if I can’t respond to everyone every time. The best way to get hold of me is to hit reply to this email. It goes straight to my inbox.

Tonight I am off to watch a jazz band at the Riverhouse Barn in Walton tonight. As a stone-kicking indie-kid, jazz always felt like a four-letter word, but I am going with a fully-paid up member of Ronnie Scotts and a folk aficionado who describes himself as “jazz curious”, so I should be okay. I’ve been swotting up by watching old Fast Show episodes, one of which features a deathless ejaculation by ace trumpeter Jackson Jefferson Jackson: “Tune?! This is jazz!”

Have an excellent weekend.

Nick