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PR Week puts departed Post Office Comms Director in its “Power” Book
Read More…: PR Week puts departed Post Office Comms Director in its “Power” BookOn Tuesday 27 February, the Post Office’s Director of Communications, Richard Taylor, left the Post Office. He had been suspended since 12 January after two recordings of him were made public by TalkTV. Curiously he has just been included in PR Week’s Power Book 2024, which celebrates “the most influential and respected comms professionals in the UK today”. In the Post Office Tapes, recorded in 2020 and 2021, Taylor insinuated many of the campaigning Subpostmasters were thieves. Specifically, he said: RT: “We give you… £30,000 pounds in cash to stick in a safe. And the problem with £30,000 in cash…
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Chris’s Compensation Solutions
Read More…: Chris’s Compensation SolutionsAfter yesterday’s parliamentary debate on Postmaster Compensation, former Subpostmaster Chris Head came up with his solutions for sorting everything out in a timely manner. Chris is a member of the Group Litigation Order (GLO) scheme, announced in 2022, by the (then) Postal Affairs Minister Paul Scully. For the last four years, however, Chris has been helping other Subpostmasters find their way around the mess surrounding the compensation schemes whilst working with Dan Neidle to expose their flaws. Chris posted his thoughts on twitter yesterday, I have edited and reformatted them for clarity and published them, with his permission, below: HSS…
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Staunton shoots back
Read More…: Staunton shoots backOn 18 Feb, the Sunday Times published this extraordinary interview with Henry Staunton, the sacked chair of the Post Office. Staunton said there was a “toxic” culture within the Post Office, alleged that the government had told him to go slow on compensation payments and that the Post Office CEO had written to the Business department saying that hundreds of Postmasters prosecuted by the Post Office were “guilty as charged”. It was followed in Monday’s Times with a story reporting that the Subpostmaster members on the Post Office board felt “ignored and unwanted”. At 4.18pm on 19 Feb, an outraged…
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The unredacted Project Sparrow board minutes
Read More…: The unredacted Project Sparrow board minutesOn 26 Jan the BBC’s excellent economics correspondent Andy Verity published a story. Andy had eyes on two confidential Post Office documents which had previously only been published under FOI in heavily-redacted form. They were Project Sparrow board sub-committee meeting minutes from 9 and 30 April 2014. Project Sparrow was the codename given by the Post Office to its interactions with the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, MPs and Second Sight (independent investigators) between 2013 and 2015. During the 2018 group litigation Bates v Post Office at the High Court, the Post Office tried to claim the name “Project Sparrow” was…
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What’s really going on with the Subpostmaster compensation schemes pt. 3
Read More…: What’s really going on with the Subpostmaster compensation schemes pt. 3This short series of blog posts reveals the contents of a letter sent by the barrister Paul Marshall to the Post Office Horizon Inquiry. The letter shares Marshall’s concerns at the Post Office/Government compensation schemes and the way they are being run. It was written on 9 January 2024. Part 1 deals with the section of the letter which addressed the problems being suffered by Subpostmaster claimants in the Bates v Post Office High Court litigation with overturned criminal convictions. Part 2 deals with what Marshall calls the “complete absence of any principled approach to interim payments”. This final part…
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What’s really going on with the Subpostmaster compensation schemes pt. 2
Read More…: What’s really going on with the Subpostmaster compensation schemes pt. 2In Part 1 of this short series I quoted at length from a letter written to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry on 9 Jan 2024, by the barrister Paul Marshall. That blog post covered Mr Marshall’s concerns about Subpostmaster claimants in the Bates v Post Office High Court litigation with overturned criminal convictions. The following blog post quotes from the same letter. In this instance Marshall is concerned with what he describes as the “complete absence of any principled approach to interim payments”. It is another lengthy extract, but it makes clear an invidious and unfair situation. The only…
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What’s really going on with the Subpostmaster compensation schemes pt. 1
Read More…: What’s really going on with the Subpostmaster compensation schemes pt. 1I’ve obtained a letter to Sir Wyn Williams, written by the barrister Paul Marshall. Sir Wyn is the retired judge who chairs the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Paul Marshall represents, in his words, “some of those most grievously affected by the Post Office’s conduct”. The letter is dated 9 January 2024. Whilst recent government announcements, prompted by an ITV drama series, may come to supersede some the concerns expressed in the letter, we should bear in mind that Marshall was writing more than four years after the Bates v Post Office High Court settlement which set in motion the…
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Podcast: Scully calls for Vennells to be stripped of CBE
Read More…: Podcast: Scully calls for Vennells to be stripped of CBEIn his first interview on the subject since leaving government, Paul Scully MP says former Post Office Chief Executive (2012 – 2019) Paula Vennells should “absolutely” lose her CBE which was awarded to her in the 2019 New Year’s Honours list. “I’m a backbench MP now so I can say what I want, I think, reasonably. I think people do need to be held to account and that it includes Paula Vennells…. From what I see of it, the tactics used by the Paula Vennells-led Post Office were pretty horrendous and people need to be held to account.” Scully also…
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Podcast: Where Did All The Money Go?
Read More…: Podcast: Where Did All The Money Go?It is the question I have probably been asked the most over the years. The long answer is in the podcast I have recorded with Mark Baker (left in the photo above), a long-serving Subpostmaster and union rep, and Ron Warmington (right in the photo above), now Chairman of Second Sight, the forensic accountancy firm that went into the Post Office in 2012 and uncovered the sort of disaster which could very well be (and was eventually proved as being) responsible for serious miscarriages of justice. Between us, we cobbled together a list of 14 different destinations, which I have…
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Gary’s years of hurt
Read More…: Gary’s years of hurtLet’s have a look at another one of the frontline plods who made it their business to investigate Subpostmasters and recommend them (or not) for prosecution based on what, at times, seems to be imaginary evidence. Gary Thomas (and this will shock you) started his career in the Post Office as a counter clerk, rising to Crown Office branch manager, before joining the Security Team in 2000. He left in 2012. Thomas therefore worked at the heart of the Post Office’s investigation and prosecution complex for 12 of the 13 years it was prosecuting its Subpostmasters on the basis of…
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