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Inquiry to consider yet more delays
Read More…: Inquiry to consider yet more delaysUPDATE: The inquiry’s hearings have now been postponed at least until 25 July, possibly until after summer. ORIGINAL COPY: The statutory public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is looking very wobbly. Last month’s hearings were postponed as the Chair, Sir Wyn Williams, was ill. Last night we heard Sir Wyn is considering postponing most of this month’s hearings until after summer because of the Post Office’s failure to properly disclose documents to the inquiry, which might be of relevance to this month’s witnesses. We’ve already seen the second postponement of Gareth Jenkins’ evidence (the Fujitsu engineer under…
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The Burton Report
Read More…: The Burton ReportWhen it transpired the Post Office had chosen to award itself bonuses for co-operating with the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, it caused something of a storm. The somewhat crass idea that the Post Office should reward itself for co-operating with the inquiry was bad enough. Even worse was the fact the bonus metrics were said to have been met with approval from Sir Wyn Williams, the inquiry chair. This was entirely false. Sir Wyn Williams had done no such thing. He wasn’t even aware the Post Office had a bonus scheme related to his inquiry. To compound…
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The Post Office Race Equality duty in the application of its prosecutorial powers
Read More…: The Post Office Race Equality duty in the application of its prosecutorial powersDr Minh Alexander is back. Dr Alexander contacted me a few years ago when she was alarmed to hear that The Reverend Paula Vennells had sailed into a job running an NHS Trust. Dr Alexander felt The Revd Vennells’ active attempts to play down and possibly suppress the Post Office scandal whilst CEO of the Post Office made her exactly the wrong sort of person to be running a large NHS Trust. The NHS has form when it comes to trying to suppress revelations about serious wrongdoing. Bringing someone in whose instinct, it seemed, was to cover-up a scandal could…
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Help Noel translate his book into English
Read More…: Help Noel translate his book into EnglishUPDATE: Noel has done it! Here is a message sent to everyone who donated to the campaign, sent on Friday night: “On behalf of the Thomas Family, I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone for the wonderful response to our crowdfunder. We have by now received support from nearly 200 individuals from all parts of the UK. I had set a target of £6,000 to cover the costs of translating and adapting “Llythyr Noel” into English with a closing date of August 2, 2023. But by today, June 23, this sum has already reached an amazing sum…
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What were they thinking?
Read More…: What were they thinking?Whilst the Post Office was prosecuting Subpostmasters for crimes they didn’t commit, it was also asking its investigators if their suspects were “Negroid Types”. This was as recently as 2008. The document (which you can read here) has come to light as a result of diligent and tenacious FOI work by Eleanor Shaikh. In its response to Eleanor (which you can read here) the Post Office called the document “obsolete” and apologised for the “unacceptable” language. In a social media post earlier today the Post Office went further, saying: “The racist language used in this document was unacceptable. We don’t…
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Sam Harrison, former Nawton Subpostmaster
Read More…: Sam Harrison, former Nawton SubpostmasterSam Harrison was was one of the 555 claimants in Bates v Post Office. Sadly, she passed away earlier this month. She was 54. Sam is, by my reckoning, the 61st known compensation claimant to have died before receiving proper redress for the losses inflicted on her by the Post Office. I was contacted by one of Sam’s three sons, Will, who wrote the following the following notice: “It is with great sadness that myself, Edward and Charlie are announcing the passing of our mum Sam Harrison on the 11th May 2023 at the age of 54 following a three…
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Current Post Office Horizon IT issues
Read More…: Current Post Office Horizon IT issuesThe Post Office’s Horizon IT system was described as in a 2019 High Court judgment as being “not remotely robust” between 2000 and 2010. Between 2010 and 2017 it was described as “slightly more robust… but still had a significant number of bugs, errors and defects”. The same judgment also said that after 2017 Horizon was “far more robust than either of the previous two iterations of the system.” What follows is a current list of (known and published) problems with the Horizon system in May 2023. Pre-2020, this sort of information was not shared with Subpostmasters, nor their criminal…
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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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