Archives :
Inquiry
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Venal. Incompetent. Mendacious.
The above box appeared in the Post Office’s 2021/2022 Annual Report, which was not filed at Companies House until 24 February this year (and published a week later on the Post Office website). The box was part of a section of the annual report entitled “Remuneration Outcomes”. In this section, we were told the Post…
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Ecce Chambers
I attended the morning session of Anne Chambers’ evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry yesterday. Chambers is a former senior Fujitsu engineer, currently under police investigation. She is of signal importance to this scandal on the basis that she gave evidence in the Post Office’s High Court civil prosecution of Lee Castleton, the…
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Why hasn’t Fujitsu sacked Andy Dunks?
The man in the photograph, Andy Dunks, gave evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry this week. He works for Fujitsu. In the days when the Post Office wanted to prosecute Horizon users for crimes of dishonesty, it would go to Andy at Fujitsu for ARQ (Horizon’s audit record query) data or a log…
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Trotter is back at the Post Office – why?
Brian Trotter is a Post Office lifer (1980 – 2020) and former contract manager who has been either directly or indirectly involved in the auditing, suspending and sacking of several Subpostmasters. He gave evidence in the first Bates v Post Office trial, where he was cross-examined on the case of former Subpostmaster Louise Dar. In…
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The Ismay Report
This is Rod Ismay. In 2010 he wrote what has become known as the Ismay Report. It was written as an internal Post Office response to the formation of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, the questions raised by MPs about the Horizon IT system and the first journalistic investigation into the Post Office’s wild, decade-long…
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Andrew Winn: the Over-promoted Postie
I first became fascinated by the Post Office’s willingness to place loyalty and length of service over ability in 2018 at the Bates v Post Office litigation at the High Court. During the litigation’s first trial, a succession of Post Office witnesses took the stand. Some were sharp, some were the dimmest of dim bulbs,…
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Post Office v Castleton – a second category Abuse of Process?
An extraordinary piece of evidence has been raised at the Post Office Horizon Inquiry. It came during the day long car crash which was Andrew Winn’s testimony. Winn was a hopelessly over-promoted former postie who eventually fetched up reporting to the Post Office’s Head of Product and Branch Accounting, Rod Ismay (author of the infamous…
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Inquiry re-start preview
Part 2 of Phase 3 of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry gets underway today. There will be three more weeks of evidence before another break until May, punctuated by another compensation hearing on 27 April. There are going to be some intriguing witnesses over the next three weeks. I have picked out a few.…
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Altman General Review finally published
On Friday, a key document in understanding the Post Office scandal was brought to the surface. It is the 15 October 2013 General Review into the Post Office’s past prosecutions and future prosecution policy, written by Brian Altman KC. The Review came up almost in passing during former Post Office auditor Chris Gilding’s evidence to…
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EXCLUSIVE: How not to commission a complex IT project
Going around the country trying to spread the word about the Post Office Scandal (whilst also hoping to sell copies of my book) has brought me into contact with a class of bright, often retired, professional people who are appalled at what happened. Some even have direct experience of the story, usually from an interesting…