Hello there secret emailers!
Feels like it’s been a while. I have decided to spend today and tomorrow completing my epic task to fisk the common issues judgment.
The fruit of today’s labour is all the Common Issues in the common issues judgment and the judge’s findings on them in one place. It is called:
His Lordship’s thoughts on the common issues are bloody hard to work out from the judgment, because they are drenched in references to case law, have contingent findings, and are dealt with in highly technical language in an order than makes logical and legal sense to him, rather than numerically. .
Which parts of the Subpostmaster contract are unenforceable?
Who won what? helps make clear which parts of the Subpostmaster contracts are no longer enforceable – either at the time the claimants were contracted or for any existing Subpostmasters, past, present or going forward.
I know these posts get shared on forums which do have active Subpostmasters reading them (and there are now many active Subpostmasters who are secret emailers themselves – hello and welcome). I suspect the Post Office hasn’t told you which bits of your contract are now meaningless. If that’s the case, please read and share Who won what? to provoke the debate.
Peut-être je me recuse, peut-être je me ne recuse pas
In other news it’s all gearing up for the whites-of-their-eyes Big Dog showdown as Lord Grabiner stalks into the Rolls Building on Wednesday to attempt to demonstrate to Sir Peter Fraser how and why he is hopelessly compromised by his own apparent bias.
I will be there live-tweeting at @nickwallis (if you’ve never done twitter before, all you have to do is click on the above page at the allotted time and periodically hit refresh. that’s it) and then I’ll put together a write-up which I’ll post on the blog. I’ll link to that and the unrolled thread of tweets in a secret email directly to your inbox by the end of the day.
Cash money
Soon after this week’s fun, I will post up how much I have earned from your kind donations, and how much I have spent since my last missive on the subject. My increased output during the trial has brought newcomers to the secret email, as have the strange developments of late.
The bigger this story gets, the more readers come to the blog, and a percentage of those readers feel moved to donate. To those who have done so, and who might have only received their first secret email in the last week or so (or if this is your first!), thank you so much for funding this project. It is such a privilege to dive deep into a story, get a front row seat at the High Court and hopefully produce work which has an effect in the wider world.
Tomorrow morning I will either turn my attention to the judge’s comments on the NFSP (and the NFSP’s response), or get on with a very short summary of what the whole common issues judgment trial means, says and does and who it criticizes (with all the juicy findings/quotes in one place).
Then I want to write up what Alan Bates and James Hartley from Freeths said on the steps of the High Court on 15 March (common issues trial judgment day), basically for the record, though it might be quicker and cheaper to use a transcribing service for the purpose.
Plenty to get on with. Thanks for the opportunity to continue to do it.
Have a good evening.
Nick