Hey secret emailers
First things first – thanks very much to all the new subscribers who have joined over the past few weeks. I am very grateful for your support. I appreciate it’s been pretty thin gruel in terms of the content I’ve beenposting recently, but I’ve been preserving the cash in the crowdfunding pot whilst gearing up for this month’s activity.
I have been hoping to get two blog posts out for some time – in fact, I think I’ve been promising them since the summer. I’m delighted to say one of them is now live. It is mainly the work of Eleanor Shaikh, the lady pictured below.
Eleanor is an extraordinary woman with a talent (among many others of course!) for getting into the weeds of tedious government documents and picking out the key information.
She has been working tirelessly, out of the kindness of her heart, to support a former Subpostmaster in Farncombe whose situation arose after the 2017 cut-off for joining the group litigation. His story is just as shocking as many others told on postofficetrial.
Eleanor obviously got wind of the litigation and has been an immense help digging around in publicly available documents to try to nail down the exact nature of the relationship between the government. Surprise surprise, it is not as the government would have us believe.
A few weeks ago Eleanor sent me the fruit of her summer’s endeavours – a fully referenced deep dive into the accountability soup which may be responsible for the government allowing large chunks of the Post Office’s behaviour to go unmonitored and unaudited for so long.
It is such a long document I have had to break it down a bit for blog consumption, so there will be a part 2 and possibly a part 3 to all this if I get the time to put it up.
In the meantime, enjoy the Shaikh down, formally titled The Post Office’s Journey Into Disaster: oversight/accountability pt 1). Apologies if it is a bit niche. I am hoping it will reach the relevant legislators.
Other news
As we know, the Horizon Trial judgment is imminent, there is a Court of Appeal hearing for the first trial judgment on 12 November and on Thursday this week there is a scheduled Case Management Conference for the forthcoming March 2020 trial. I will attend if the conference is going ahead and report back.
The last court day I attended was a Costs Management Conference on 23 September – you can read what happened here.
By my estimation the crowdfunding pot will be dry by the end of this month, but I don’t want to launch any fundraising campaign just yet. There are quite a few options to ponder. If mediation happens and is successful, the next trial will likely be scrapped. If the mediation talks break down or mediation itself fails and the trial is back on… how long can this litigation go on for? Another year? Two years with appeals? I reckon I can actively fundraise a maximum of once a year, and it has been a year since the last campaign, but with a formal fundraising campaign, I have to be fundraising for something specific. At the moment no one could predict what direction the litigation will take over the next few weeks.
That said, if you want to help – please tell your friends about the blog and the secret emails and point them in the direction of the paypal button below. Ad hoc donations remain incredibly welcome, but I don’t need any more from existing secret emailers. When I do, I’ll let you know – but spreading the word is something very much in your gift and I would be delighted if you could.
Okay – that’s it, enjoy Eleanor’s deep dive and hang tight for a ramping up of activity on here over the next few weeks as judgments, hearings and decisions are made.
All the best
Nick