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Exclusive: Post Office fails in compensation clawback attempt
Read More…: Exclusive: Post Office fails in compensation clawback attemptPublicly, the government has said it is determined to compensate Subpostmasters affected by the Post Office scandal “as soon as possible”. Behind the scenes it seems determined to drag things out to a ridiculous degree. Earlier this year both the Post Office and the government decided that money gifted to Subpostmasters with criminal convictions, by other Subpostmasters, should count against any compensation they receive from the government when/if those convictions are quashed. Four years ago today the Post Office settled with 555 Subpostmasters who had taken it to the High Court as part of the Bates v Post Office class…
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More Singh’d against than Singh-ing
Read More…: More Singh’d against than Singh-ingThere has been some rank incompetence on display from various Post Office witnesses over the course of this inquiry, but I think we’ll have to go some way to find a worse performance than this. We know from the witnesses during Bates v Post Office and the Inquiry evidence we’ve heard over most of 2023 that the Post Office is stuffed to the gills with lifers, plodders and gormless apparatchiks inexplicably promoted into positions way beyond their ability. Unlike most of them, Jarnail Singh did not rise to middle-management after starting his career as a counter clerk or a postie.…
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Criminal conspiracy: slowly joining the dots
Read More…: Criminal conspiracy: slowly joining the dotsA throwaway line in a piece of oral evidence at the Horizon IT inquiry yesterday may have revealed more about the cover-up which some are now openly calling a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice at the Post Office. The evidence came from Dave Pardoe, a former Senior Security Manager, invested with the power to sign off on Subpostmaster prosecutions. Pardoe’s evidence followed a familiar line – that Post Office investigators were told they shouldn’t consider Horizon as the source of a discrepancy at a branch. Then he said: “There was a persistent sentiment that the system was…
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The Post Office vs Teju Adedayo
Read More…: The Post Office vs Teju AdedayoOn 14 May 2021 Teju Adedayo had her criminal conviction quashed at Southwark Crown Court. Parmod Kalia, who had been convicted of theft, had his conviction quashed alongside Teju. In 2005 Teju took responsibility for £52,864 going missing from her branch and provided the Post Office with a “confession”, explaining she took £50,000 out of her Post Office to pay back some people she’d borrowed money from. In 2006, she pleaded guilty to three counts of false accounting and was given a suspended sentence. In 2001, Parmod made a similar “confession”, telling Post Office investigators he took £22,000 from his…
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The Magic Signature
Read More…: The Magic Signature‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass There was some bewildering evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry on the afternoon of Thursday 16 November from Cath Oglesby, the Post Office area manager who sacked Lee Castleton. Lee first came to Oglesby’s attention in December 2003,…
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Shameless Xmas book plug
Read More…: Shameless Xmas book plugPlease forgive this short commercial interlude. Christmas is approaching, which I am told is a good time to try to sell books. I have two which came out in the last twelve months and I was wondering if you – or someone else in your life – might be interested in them. Think of them as excellent stocking fillers. The Depp book was well-reviewed and was even The Week’s Book of the Week earlier this year. The Post Office book still has 5 stars (well, 4.8, but they round it up to five on the actual stars) on Amazon. The…
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Institutional investigative ignorance
Read More…: Institutional investigative ignorancePaul Whitaker, as it says in the screengrab above, used to be a Post Office Investigator (and, almost inevitably, before that, a postman). In his evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry on Thursday, Mr Whitaker was taken to a 2011 email chain regarding his investigation into a Post Office branch in St John Green in Rotherham. The branch had been “audited” by the Post Office, and there was an £11,000 discrepancy. A counter clerk was under suspicion. Unusually, possibly because the branch was run by a charity, the police were involved. In his email to a colleague, Jane…
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What Was She Drinking? The Elaine Cottam Experience
Read More…: What Was She Drinking? The Elaine Cottam ExperienceIt’s hard to know where to start with yesterday’s Inquiry hearing. Karl Flinders from Computer Weekly decided to cover yet another Post Office disclosure disaster. I am going to attempt to analyse the evidence which came courtesy of Elaine Cottam. Ms Cottam was a former Post Office Retail Line Manager. She was called to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry to help try to work out what had happened in the Cleveleys case. Cleveleys Post Office was run in 2000 by a woman called Julie Wolstenholme who suffered problems with the Post Office Horizon system from the…
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Noel and Sian’s book and podcast interview!
Read More…: Noel and Sian’s book and podcast interview!I’m delighted to tell you that Noel and Sian Thomas’s book The Stamp of Innocence is available as an ebook from Amazon. Noel was prosecuted by the Post Office and sent to prison in 2006. On getting out the Post Office went after his house and pension. Noel had his conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal in 2021. To mark the auspicious moment of his book’s publication, Rebecca Thomson and I interviewed Aled (Noel and Sian’s ghostwriter) and Noel for our podcast Investigating the Post Office Scandal. Sian was there to sort the technicals (see above pic), but had…
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A family’s pain…
Read More…: A family’s pain…Three days after the historic, celebratory scenes outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 23 April 2021, I got an email from Paul Cousins (Jnr), Wendy Cousins’ son. Wendy Cousins was one of the three Subpostmasters whose conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal. Paul wrote: For us it was another disastrous day. My mother described it as the worst day since the very day the post office was shut without notice and the house was searched. I noted your piece outside the court on LBC News – talking about collusion with the government and the power of an…
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