Archives :
IT
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The Second Sight Interim Report
I’ve been talking a lot recently about Second Sight’s Interim Report, written by Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson. It is a game-changing, short, easy-to-read document, released on 8 July 2013 which sets out all of the Post Office’s problems to them in clear language. It used to be published on the Post Office website, but…
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Penny’s Printouts
This is Penny Williams. Penny ran the Manaccan Post Office in Cornwall between 2007 and 2013. I have just come off stage with Penny at Launceston Town Hall where she spoke about her experiences at the hands of the Post Office. During our conversation, Penny revealed she has paper evidence of what appears to be…
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Podcast: Scully calls for Vennells to be stripped of CBE
In his first interview on the subject since leaving government, Paul Scully MP says former Post Office Chief Executive (2012 – 2019) Paula Vennells should “absolutely” lose her CBE which was awarded to her in the 2019 New Year’s Honours list. “I’m a backbench MP now so I can say what I want, I think,…
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Podcast: Where Did All The Money Go?
It is the question I have probably been asked the most over the years. The long answer is in the podcast I have recorded with Mark Baker (left in the photo above), a long-serving Subpostmaster and union rep, and Ron Warmington (right in the photo above), now Chairman of Second Sight, the forensic accountancy firm…
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Lord Arbuthnot: “I feel we are heading in the right direction”
Last week the Sunday Times asked me to write a piece about the Post Office scandal. The result can be read here. In the course of researching the article I picked up a lot of interesting material which, for reasons of space, didn’t make the final cut. Rather than let some good stuff go to…
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Current Post Office Horizon IT issues
The Post Office’s Horizon IT system was described as in a 2019 High Court judgment as being “not remotely robust” between 2000 and 2010. Between 2010 and 2017 it was described as “slightly more robust… but still had a significant number of bugs, errors and defects”. The same judgment also said that after 2017 Horizon…
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Rod Ismay: the useful idiot
I was expecting more from Rod Ismay. He was, after all, an Ernst and Young auditor – one of the finest bean counters money can buy. Ismay joined the Post Office in 2003 after spending 11 years at the accounting giant, where, amongst other things, he was one of the Post Office’s auditors. Rod Ismay…
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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…