So what exactly are the common issues?

Hey secret emailers!

[*whispers*] I’m on a busy commuter train so I better keep it down…

I was feeling a bit bedraggled by the end of last week, and my noble intentions to get up bright and early on Friday morning and knock off a secret email, reorder all my documentation and send out a comprehensive blog post on Friday afternoon didn’t quite come good. I overslept, the ordering and indexing took longer than I thought (and still isn’t anywhere near finished), and the blog posts and secret emails dribbled out over the weekend.

Still – this week is a good opportunity to catch up with everything. Court is only scheduled to sit for one day this week – today, and whilst I have managed to find gainful employment elsewhere, I am hoping I can spend my free time requesting, receiving, indexing and publishing some of the documents I have requested. And I really do want to have a look at the agreed transcripts. There have been some juicy exchanges in court, but I haven’t been able to tweet them as direct quotes because I sometimes can’t be sure I have picked up every word.

I know there are many people following the live tweets, which are blow-by-blow notes of the proceedings. To make sure I have accurate direct quotes I’d have to stop live tweeting and focus on getting those out. Direct quotes really help newspaper journalists. They can be published as something said contemporaneously, in court, under oath, on the record, and there are a few news organisations who are kickstarter patrons asking for more.

Getting hold of agreed transcripts is, of course, much safer, but it’s slower. The first day of this trial was 7 November, today is 26 November and I have yet to receive the Day 1 transcript, let alone anything else.

Focusing on direct quotes is something I might look at for the Horizon trial, but by that stage there may be more journalists in court looking to write up the newsworthy quotes whilst I keep banging away with my fists on the keyboard.

Correspondence

I remain extremely grateful to those who send me emails with links to information I might have missed, theories, advice, and their personal stories, some of which are very moving.

I am hoping to go back to some of those people who were and are Subpostmasters and ask if they mind me publishing their testimony. There are also a couple of Subpostmasters who have been in touch (and there must be many more out there) who have a comfortable working relationship with Horizon. They view this legal action with some concern. Don’t forget the Post Office has acknowledged it threatens their very existence. No Post Office = no value in branch Post Offices. I am hoping one of those concerned Subpostmasters will contribute to the blog.

To make sure there is no confusion about what you send me – unless a correspondent makes it explicit they want me to pass information on or publish it (with or without their names and details attached), I will always ask permission before sharing or publishing any email which comes my way. If you just want to vent and have me read what you’ve written, that’s great – I love getting the emails. But if what you’ve written is interesting or too good to ignore, don’t be surprised if I come back to you asking if we can think about publishing or passing on what you’ve written. I am a journalist, after all.

What are the Common Issues, then?

This is one link which has been sent to me which I should have found and posted before the trial started. My bad. It is the list of the common issues which underpin this Common Issues trial.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2018/2698.pdf

This week I will post up a page which has links to this, the claim, the amended particulars of claim, the generic defence, the defendants and claimants opening submissions so a) you can find them and read them and b) www.postofficetrial.com becomes a resource for those who want to do their own research between and after the trials.

Right, I’m going into the Rolls Building early this morning as I have some admin to attend to. Live tweets commence from 10.30am and I will send you a write-up of Day 11 from the bar of the London Irish training complex in Surrey at around 9.30pm, whilst my daughter continues to explore the possibilities of military service at the Air Cadets unit next door.

Tee-en-shun!

At ease.