Good morning
If you have not read my write-up of former Post Office Operations Director Mike Young, please be my guest.
It’s Mike’s World. We just live in it.
Sorry for not alerting you to it sooner. Don’t forget you can get all my blog posts into your email inbox within an hour of them being posted. All you have to do is sign up to the email alerts on the postofficescandal.uk front page. The little widget is easy to find. Just put your email address in the box and you’ll be away. Your email address is held by me and is not used for any other purpose than alerting you to my work.
Do better, Wallis
I must admit I’m a little behind with the inquiry having not seen a huge amount of yesterday’s evidence. Tracy Marshall, the Post Office’s Retail Engagement Director and Melanie Park, the Post Office’s Central Operations Director were in the chair.
You can watch what they had to say, read the transcript and their witness statements here (something I’ll be doing later).
Today it’s the turn of John Bartlett, who runs the Post Office’s Assurance and Complex Investigations team.
Bartlett is a former police officer, and was the subject of a complaint by Postmaster Non-Executive Director Elliot Jacobs. Jacobs had some discrepancies at his branches, and after the Post Office’s “branch assurance” team passed their concerns onto Bartlett, he went full tonto on Jacobs, who was clearly shaken by the experience.
Old habits die hard, I guess, and it speaks volumes about the Post Office that they continue to employ people like this. Post Office CEO Nick Read apparently described Bartlett as one of the “Untouchables”.
I am going to be at the Inquiry hearing tomorrow to watch Ben Foat, the “stepped back” Post Office General Counsel and Law Society’s In-house solicitor of the year 2018 give evidence. More reports will follow.
Other media
More news lines from this week’s evidence:
Post Office chiefs changed Horizon data in branches last year without telling operators, inquiry hears – The Guardian
UK government should consider suing Post Office ex-directors over scandal, says Alan Bates – FT
Former police officer heading Post Office operations did nothing to help innocent subpostmasters – Computer Weekly
Back soon!
Nick