Archives :
2023
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What Was She Drinking? The Elaine Cottam Experience
It’s hard to know where to start with yesterday’s Inquiry hearing. Karl Flinders from Computer Weekly decided to cover yet another Post Office disclosure disaster. I am going to attempt to analyse the evidence which came courtesy of Elaine Cottam. Ms Cottam was a former Post Office Retail Line Manager. She was called to give…
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Noel and Sian’s book and podcast interview!
I’m delighted to tell you that Noel and Sian Thomas’s book The Stamp of Innocence is available as an ebook from Amazon. Noel was prosecuted by the Post Office and sent to prison in 2006. On getting out the Post Office went after his house and pension. Noel had his conviction quashed at the Court…
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A family’s pain…
Three days after the historic, celebratory scenes outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 23 April 2021, I got an email from Paul Cousins (Jnr), Wendy Cousins’ son. Wendy Cousins was one of the three Subpostmasters whose conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal. Paul wrote: For us it was another disastrous day. My…
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Calling former Subpostmasters, managers and Post Office employees…
Professor Richard Moorhead will be known to some of you. He writes a well-regarded legal ethics blog (“Lawyer Watch“) and a free substack site dedicated to matters arising from the Post Office Horizon scandal. He is also a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. In addition to this Prof Moorhead has been running various…
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Nothing personal, Mr Castleton. It’s just justice…
Today, Stephen Dilley, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, gave evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Womble have a long and inglorious history with the Post Office, right up to acting for them (disastrously) in the Bates v Post Office group litigation. Back when they were known as Bond Pearce, Dilley helped the…
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Post Office auditor signed Court statement containing info she knew was false
Helen Rose is a former Post Office auditor and investigator. Mrs Rose has no formal auditing qualifications or training, no training she can recall on the Post Office Horizon IT system and no formal training in investigation. She is also the author of the Helen Rose report, which provided some of the first concrete evidence…
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Govt offers “eligible” Postmasters £600,000 take-it-or-leave-it compensation
The government has tried to break the compensation impasse for “eligible” Subpostmasters whose convictions have been quashed. The deal on the table is £600,000 to walk away. This is the transcript of the announcement and subsequent debate in parliament. The maximum number of people who qualify for the deal are the 86 Subpostmasters whose convictions…
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Will Post Office execs continue to be given bonuses for their Inquiry work?
Earlier this week I spotted a job advert for a Senior Legal Counsel at the Post Office, reporting to the Post Office’s Head of Legal specifically responsible for matters relating to the statutory Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. The Post Office has recently been hauled over the coals by politicians for rewarding its Chief Executive…
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Racist ID codes. When did they leave the Met?
On 2 June 2023 I sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force. I asked: “Could you tell me when the police stopped using the word “negroid” in its racial identification codes? Please can you supply me with documentation supporting this?” To give the Met’s FOI department some context,…
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Ed Henry KC: “You couldn’t contrive a more ridiculous state of affairs”
In the course of preparing for a recent Sunday Times piece into the latest on the Post Office disaster, I spoke to a number of people. For reasons of space, many of their contributions were edited down to a couple of short quotes, or they simply didn’t make it into the piece at all. Nonetheless,…