Hi
I am at the Radio Festival at the Institute of Physics today. Above is their lovely garden, which is adjacent to Regent’s Park in London.
This morning I spoke (inside the building) to Sima Kotecha (formerly a colleague at BBC Radio Newsbeat, now the BBC’s Senior UK News correspondent) about the making of The Great Post Office Trial for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. We found out today it has been streamed 4.9m times, which apparently is quite a big deal for radio.
Anyway, during the session, I had been instructed to switch my phone to airplane mode.
As we came off stage I was informed that the Post Office CEO Nick Read had announced he was standing down. I also had a call from Sky News asking me to talk about it.
I have written up the news here. I am grateful to the Subpostmaster who kindly forwarded me the all-Subpostmaster email announcing the news.
As a journalist I am entirely reliant on people who send me stuff – the recipients of this email are the best informed people about the Post Office story. Please never stop sending me stuff.
Sky News, who broke the story, have written it up here.
Chris Head was also quicker to the story than me. Chris is a former Subpostmaster who is doing a better job that most journalists on sharing and spreading the word about the Post Office scandal. Do follow him on twitter as he is almost guaranteed to regularly pick up on stuff that I will, sadly, not have time to tweet about in future.
Whilst we’re at it Monsieur Cholet is a wonderful curator of Post Office scandal-related content on twitter. Do follow him.
Other brilliant Post Office tweeters, or Xers, are, of course available.
Horizon compensation panel guru calls for statutory compensation body
Last week, Professor Chris Hodges called for a statutory compensation body for victims of state-perpetrated scandals.
He put his thinking in a paper (signed by Lord (Kevan) Jones, Lord Arbuthnot and Prof Richard Moorhead) and posted it on the government website.
John Hyde has written up the story for the Law Society Gazette.
You may have thoughts on it, especially if you are a lawyer or Subpostmaster. If you are, and do, please get in touch.
Speaking of Lord Arbuthnot
He has got back from a brief holiday and finally seen the emails and presents I mentioned in the last newsletter (remember the engraved Post Office scales?)
Lord A told me “the messages were moving and kind and will be treasured for the rest of my life. The scales, and the inscription calling me an Honorary Subpostmaster will have pride of place wherever I go. Thank you. These mean more to me than I can express.”
Other news:
A really interesting piece from the Byline Times – two individuals could be in deep trouble after allegedly putting a tracker device on Paula Vennells’ car...
BBC – More than 140 Post Office convictions could be quashed in Scotland
Karl is at it again, with another great story for Computer Weekly: Fujitsu loses £50m in sales after Post Office scandal furore
Right I better go – don’t forget the Inquiry starts up again next week so you’ll be hearing from me soon.
Very best
Nick