Aye Caramba
It was a sparsely-attended inquiry yesterday. Jo Hamilton was there with the Hudgells team, as were Terry and Cindy Seeney, which was a lovely surprise. I met first Terry and Cindy on the Wimborne leg of the Inside Story tour earlier this year, but everything was a bit rushed and we didn’t really get a chance to chat. Yesterday we did. I am grateful Terry and Cindy allowed me to interview and photograph them, too!
Terry was a Subpostmaster in Dorset between 2002 and 2006, with Cindy running the retail side of the business and helping out behind the post office counter. It all went horribly wrong.
Terry didn’t properly tell Cindy about what happened until after he replied to a small newspaper advert in 2016 placed by a law firm called Freeths, advertising their attempt to put together a claim against the Post Office.
Terry told me that after two hours on the phone to Freeths Cindy came home and he burst into tears before telling her everything. Terry became part of the 555. The couple are still with Freeths, waiting for their compensation claim to be processed.
The Seeneys have been attending the Inquiry all week – it’s their first visit. They weren’t aware until recently that as Core Participants (they are represented at the Inquiry by Howe and Co) they could get their expenses covered by the Inquiry. It was great to have a chat after we had witnessed Margot James’ evidence. Speaking of whom…
The former Postal Affairs minister has had a splash of COVID in recent days and was therefore attending yesterday’s hearing remotely.
What she had to say was interesting though. I have written up her evidence as The Wine Gums vs The Blob, and you can read it here.
Given at least two former ministers (James and Jo Swinson) have mentioned the pivotal FINAL Second Sight report, I thought I should re-publish it nine years after I first got hold of it, this time making it searchable.
You can find Briefing Report – Part 2 here. Like their Interim and 2014 reports, it is very readable and explains exactly where the Post Office has gone wrong. Quite how the Post Office were able to ignore it and instead cleave to a misrepresented reading of the “so far found no evidence of system wide (systemic) problems” line from the Interim Report is a mystery, or a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. You choose.
The Vince and Greg Show
After a run of lady ministers, today we have a couple of gentlemen secretaries giving evidence. Vince Cable (I nearly wrote Clarke then – he must get that a lot) for the Lib Dems and Greg Clark [??!] for the Tories. Both were Secretaries of State at the Business Department during key parts of the scandal. Let’s see what they have to say. I’ll be travelling up to London shortly to find out.
Enjoy your day
Nick