Trials and tribulations

Evening secret emailers! How you doin’?

Welcome to the kind people who, over the last 24 hours, paid £20 to join this list. This is your first Post Office Trial secret email. How exciting.

I am feeling terrible, frankly, so this is not going to be a prolix loquation. I got to sleep at 2am this morning, having spent what felt like most of the evening before scanning documents into my rickety computer.

Today, though was thrill-a-minute. I spent the best part of eight hours at my kitchen table ploughing through those documents and writing up (here, if you missed it) the JFSA’s claim and the Post Office’s defence, and, I must admit, it felt like a waste of time.

A lot of the issues the Subpostmasters have had to deal with are already in the public domain. The Post Office has produced thousands of words in its defence over the years.

Their current position could be paraphrased as: “whatever you say didn’t happen, or if it did happen it wasn’t our fault. It was probably yours. You’re embarrassing yourselves. Go away.”

ie it’s the same old, same old.

Admittedly there were some interesting evolutions in the Post Office’s responses on certain long-running issues, and the sheer range of legal fronts the JFSA wants to open against the Post Office was an eye-opener, but I have just seen a list of the specific (common) issues on which tomorrow’s trial will be decided, and I think that is going to be the core text in the courtroom over the next five weeks.

I’ll post it up on the blog first thing, if I’m allowed. I doubt I’ll be able to offer much in the way of contextual information alongside it, but it does look reasonably straightforward.

If you’re coming to the trial tomorrow it’s a 10am start (get there around 9.30am to go through security). It’s being held in court 26 on the 3rd floor of the Rolls Building off Fetter Lane.

I’ll be tapping away on my rickety computer somewhere near the back.

By the way if you do twitter – do follow me at @nickwallis. I will try to tweet interesting things about the trial as it’s happening.

See you soon!