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Rod Ismay: the useful idiot
Read More…: Rod Ismay: the useful idiotI was expecting more from Rod Ismay. He was, after all, an Ernst and Young auditor – one of the finest bean counters money can buy. Ismay joined the Post Office in 2003 after spending 11 years at the accounting giant, where, amongst other things, he was one of the Post Office’s auditors. Rod Ismay will go down in history as the author of the August 2010 Ismay Report into the Horizon IT system, a document which Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the Post Office Horizon Inquiry on Thursday suggested might be “a whitewash”. Ismay disagreed that his report was…
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Venal. Incompetent. Mendacious 2: What We Know Now
Read More…: Venal. Incompetent. Mendacious 2: What We Know NowThis post should be read in conjunction with its predecessor (helpfully entitled Venal. Incompetent. Mendacious.) or it won’t make any sense: Misleading parliament I have been reminded that the Post Office annual report is laid before parliament because the Post Office is a government-owned company. The falsehood in its annual report therefore means the Post Office has misled parliament. The latest the Post Office was aware of this was 6 April. Yet it chose not to inform Post Office minister, Kevin Hollinrake, or the business department that it had misled parliament. The Business Department and the Minister have confirmed to…
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Venal. Incompetent. Mendacious.
Read More…: Venal. Incompetent. Mendacious.The above box appeared in the Post Office’s 2021/2022 Annual Report, which was not filed at Companies House until 24 February this year (and published a week later on the Post Office website). The box was part of a section of the annual report entitled “Remuneration Outcomes”. In this section, we were told the Post Office has scrapped its LTIP (Long Term Incentive Plan) and STIP (Short Term Incentive Plan) bonus schemes, (which saw former CEO Paula Vennells suffer a net salary reduction of a whopping £800 (to a measly £643,800) for her role in the scandal. More on this…
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Ecce Chambers
Read More…: Ecce ChambersI attended the morning session of Anne Chambers’ evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry yesterday. Chambers is a former senior Fujitsu engineer, currently under police investigation. She is of signal importance to this scandal on the basis that she gave evidence in the Post Office’s High Court civil prosecution of Lee Castleton, the former East Bridlington Subpostmaster whose name consists the first two words of Computer Weekly’s seminal first investigation into this scandal in 2009. Chambers has never spoken in public about her role before. At the inquiry she seemed the very picture of a chatty, bright and…
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Fujitsu to host techUK reception on Justice
Read More…: Fujitsu to host techUK reception on JusticeI was contacted yesterday by a lawyer who thinks Fujitsu has got off very lightly in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, partly by doing as little as possible to acknowledge any culpability. Of course you can only get away with something if people let you, and my correspondent was particularly exercised by the actions of techUK in allowing Fujitsu to sponsor its “Justice and Emergency Services Reception 2023”. techUK is a trade organisation which “brings together people, companies and organisations to realise the positive outcomes that digital technology can achieve”. It says it collaborates “across business, government and stakeholders…
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Why hasn’t Fujitsu sacked Andy Dunks?
Read More…: Why hasn’t Fujitsu sacked Andy Dunks?The man in the photograph, Andy Dunks, gave evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry this week. He works for Fujitsu. In the days when the Post Office wanted to prosecute Horizon users for crimes of dishonesty, it would go to Andy at Fujitsu for ARQ (Horizon’s audit record query) data or a log of helpdesk calls. Andy was the cryptographic key manager for the Horizon system, working in Fujitsu’s Customer Service Post Office Account Security Team. Starting in 2002, Andy would extract data for Postmaster prosecutions, “analyse” or “summarise” it and attach it to a signed witness statement…
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Trotter is back at the Post Office – why?
Read More…: Trotter is back at the Post Office – why?Brian Trotter is a Post Office lifer (1980 – 2020) and former contract manager who has been either directly or indirectly involved in the auditing, suspending and sacking of several Subpostmasters. He gave evidence in the first Bates v Post Office trial, where he was cross-examined on the case of former Subpostmaster Louise Dar. In his 2019 judgment, Mr Justice Fraser said Trotter’s written evidence to the trial was “inaccurate” and that he: “seemed extremely nervous about giving evidence before me that he thought might be unhelpful to the Post Office”. On Thursday last week, Mr Trotter gave evidence to…
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The Ismay Report
Read More…: The Ismay ReportThis is Rod Ismay. In 2010 he wrote what has become known as the Ismay Report. It was written as an internal Post Office response to the formation of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, the questions raised by MPs about the Horizon IT system and the first journalistic investigation into the Post Office’s wild, decade-long prosecution spree. The Ismay Report only became public in 2021, during the Court of Appeal proceedings, which eventually saw 39 Subpostmasters have their convictions quashed. I cannot understand why it was not disclosed during Bates v Post Office at the High Court in 2018 or…
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Andrew Winn: the Over-promoted Postie
Read More…: Andrew Winn: the Over-promoted PostieI first became fascinated by the Post Office’s willingness to place loyalty and length of service over ability in 2018 at the Bates v Post Office litigation at the High Court. During the litigation’s first trial, a succession of Post Office witnesses took the stand. Some were sharp, some were the dimmest of dim bulbs, but all had one thing in common – the extraordinarily long amount of time they had been working for the Post Office. The smallest period of unbroken service was ten years. The longest nearly forty. Almost all had worked their way up after joining the…
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Post Office v Castleton – a second category Abuse of Process?
Read More…: Post Office v Castleton – a second category Abuse of Process?An extraordinary piece of evidence has been raised at the Post Office Horizon Inquiry. It came during the day long car crash which was Andrew Winn’s testimony. Winn was a hopelessly over-promoted former postie who eventually fetched up reporting to the Post Office’s Head of Product and Branch Accounting, Rod Ismay (author of the infamous Ismay report). Winn admitted he was completely unsuitable for the role he found himself in, which required a detailed knowledge of the Horizon IT system (he had almost none). More on Mr Winn here. I want to draw your attention to a document mentioned by…
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