The sub-postmasters scandal

[honeybee13]

There's a new post on Nick Wallis's blog.

Blog posts – Post Office Scandal

WWW.POSTOFFICESCANDAL.UK

---

Reporting the Post Office Horizon IT Scandal

 

[tobyjugg2]

I dont doubt any of that entry at all

Simple confirms (to me) that every single prosecution by the PO or any other which relied in large part on evidence from the Horizon system should be overturned and partial but significant redress made immediately while real compensation is calculated.

There is ample evidence that neither the claims regarding the Horizon systems detail on SPM 'balances' or the POs prosecuting/investigating teams warrant any merit whatsoever in a court of law. In fact they should be in the dock themselves.

That the PO are pressing, at enormous expense to the UK taxpayer as well as innocent victims,  legal arguments apparently without merit should result in the legal teams progressing these malicious and meritless actions should not only be not paid, but fines and quite possibly disbarred rather than further grief for the victims.

There may well be a few genuine criminals among the thousand (possibly thousands) victims - but that is a tiny price to pay to prevent further horrendous grief loaded upon victims

.. and if the PO is so sure of the conviction, and the evidence happens to be some thing they aren't claiming they have shredded, they can present their evidence to the normal prosecution services.

The more I look at the detail, the more I think the tables need completely turning around.

and why has vennels still not been stripped of her honor? let alone been arrested.

[honeybee13]

This is the latest from Private Eye.

Private Eye News: Young & dumb

WWW.PRIVATE-EYE.CO.UK

---

FEW statements reveal the Orwellian levels of misinformation put out by senior Post Office officials as clearly as the swift riposte to the Eye's very...

 

[honeybee13]

Alan Bates rejects 'cruel' Post Office offer.

https://archive.is/L4AeA

[tobyjugg2]

Yep was just reading that.

interesting that bates paid for forensic accountants to refute the POs claims, and the po has spent vast sums of taxpayer money defending their lies, and will continue to spend vast sums on delaying paying out

key point: External forensic accountants can see it despite information withheld by the PO - but the PO .... even shut down their own forensic accountants who did

"“Bearing in mind my solicitors engaged forensic accountants to prepare my claim in accordance with established legal principles, it now seems we have to spend hours and hours over weeks and months with government-appointed lawyers at who knows what cost, just to point out these legal principles to them. But to them it might just be a good earner.”"

[tobyjugg2]

Hows the formal process to strip Vennells of the tattered remnants of her 'formal honor going ? - besides nowhere?

Her 'handing it back' means nowt and really doesn't cut it.

 

and crony moany has surely breached the 'bring the lords into disrepute' marker - whatever else may or may not happen?

Edited February 1 by tobyjugg2

[honeybee13]

Has she reappeared then?

[tobyjugg2]

based on what has already happened ..

Lying to the press. people et al

[honeybee13]

Michael Crick on Twitter.

[stu007]

This scandal is shocking and still continues.

Alan Bates has criticised speed of Post Office payouts days before offer:

Alan Bates criticised speed of Post Office payouts days before offer

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

---

Post Office campaigner Alan Bates had told a minister the scheme needed a "boot up the backside".

 

Due to this Scandal it is affecting those present sub post maters who can't get the staff they need as they are scared of due to this scandal:

Horizon: Nefyn post office closes after failing to recruit staff

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

---

People are scared off by "horror stories" of wrongly-accused sub-postmasters, the post office says.

 

[tobyjugg2]

Should have thought that there would be no end of criminals offering to work for sub-postmasters, as they can steal whatever they like and the PO will just rain hellfire and damnation down on the SPM without investigating and ignoring anything the SPM says..

 

Whens vennells and at least 4others in court? - detailing whos orders they will leak they were following

- probably not until a change in guv enables the ex-ministerial involvement to come to light

and whens crony moany and Gove in court? (mind you Gove is careful to appear hands-off in these sort of matters)

[tobyjugg2]

Latest horrendous takeaways despite the lawyers the PO is spending millions of taxpayer £££s on

 

"When bugs were acknowledged witness statements from Fujitsu staff due to be heard in court were edited by the Post Office as it sought to maintain the line that the system was working well."

.. Sounds like perverting the course of justice to me

 

"The Post Office has admitted to failing to properly disclose thousands of relevant documents and thousands of emails but its (PO)  lawyers informed the inquiry that it was no longer realistic to ask them to work evenings and weekends on searching for relevant evidence."

Fine - PO + staff guilty - SPMs innocent until PO actually do PROVE otherwise

 

"Grant (Raymond Grant, a Post Office investigator) was legally forced to give testimony at the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal. He provided the barest bones of a witness statement, at just over two pages, criticising the inquiry for not giving him enough time to do more because it clashed with his Christmas plans.

"Grant said he (only) glanced at 78 documents the inquiry asked him to review as he was too busy at his job at the Salvation Army organising activities such as carol singing, making Christmas dinners and walking his dog."

"Frederick Thorpe, a former Post Office investigator involved in the criminal investigation of Alan McLaughlin and Maureen McKelvey, had to be reminded by the counsel at the inquiry that both subpostmasters were innocent."

...

 

"It also emerged that data from the Horizon IT system, which was responsible for the wrongful prosecution of more than 900 Post Office operators, is still used in ongoing legal cases."

.. sounds like they should be dismissed unless there is real reason beyond horizon evidence to think otherwise - and a proper audit has been demonstrably done

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/02/post-office-scandal-key-takeaways-latest-court-hearings

 

 

Edited February 2 by tobyjugg2

[brassnecked]

Whole thing is criminal TJ so much there that should drag Ministers like Davey and PO execs like Vennells to jail

[honeybee13]

Not just Davey though. There were plenty of other ministers who were responsible for the PO over the Horizon period.

[unclebulgaria67]

I only got around to watching the ITV series the other day and it just made me feel very angry.

And the anger was aimed at those within the Post Office who must have been aware of the problems with Horizon, but simply choose to ignore and accuse the sub-postmasters of either poor accounting or criminality.   

I do question what relationships former Government ministers had with Fujitsu. Did they enter into too many contracts with one supplier and therefore found it very difficult to handle any technical issues that might have been raised at the time.  Fujitsu also supplied Government with payment/HR/payroll systems, which are still being used to this day.   I wonder if too many Government eggs were put in one basket and therefore this placed ministers in a position they could not handle.  If the systems were later found to be operating poorly, it would be a very difficult and expensive process to change to a different supplier. 

[tobyjugg2]

1 hour ago, brassnecked said:

Whole thing is criminal TJ so much there that should drag Ministers like Davey and PO execs like Vennells to jail

 

Davey? I see no reason whatsoever for him or Starmer .... but Jo Swinson - yes

Vennells -  I'm no barrister but seem to have already seen more than enough evidence to arrest her  - and refuse her lawyers paid for by the taxpayer/PO

Should be medieval/GOT on that monster. She should be in Belmarsh at the least - quite possibly the worst inhuman torturer of innocent people in recent British criminal history.

I'm sure she will burn if what she claims to believe is true. - although I dont doubt for a moment those beliefs are as fake and self-serving as the rest of her.

 

 

Question @brassnecked

Why are you pointing the finger @ davey with no evidence apparent whatsoever that he did anything knowingly wrong (or anything other than a hindsight judgement call on a decision he made when at the time it seemed to be a right one) rather than every minister and senior civil servant with PO responsibility since 2015?

- who IMO should be first ports of call along with the EVERY member of the PO board

 

and a lack of  'update

Note all the actually Vennells queries seem to be sat on

Requests similar to 'who nominated Paula Vennells for a CBE and who approved it' - WhatDoTheyKnow

WWW.WHATDOTHEYKNOW.COM

 

Edited February 3 by tobyjugg2

[tobyjugg2]

well, more and more implications of government involvement in the scandal via their 'board member'(s?) for example cooper - who can hardly say he knew nothing about teh scandal - being as he inappropriately OK'd a bonus that stated they had helped the inquirey finish 'in line with expectations' eh?

real rats nest that

Just look for the blacked out 'attendees at the meetings

 

[honeybee13]

It's an absolute can of worms. There are horror stories in the press every day now.

[tobyjugg2]

if you read this carefully, and look just a little deeper into whats said, you can see what the guv and its interface to the PO were probably doing all this time since 2010/2011 or before

- make the PO at least 'seem profitable to mutualise or sell it - at all costs whatever real problems there were

 

‘Constructive’ talks held over transfer of Post Office ownership to operators | Post Office | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

---

Minister met union officials and representatives from co-operative movement to discuss mutualisation

 

 

 

Edited February 8 by tobyjugg2

[tobyjugg2]

Kemi Badenoch failed to raise Horizon scandal when she met Fujitsu at Davos | Post Office Horizon scandal | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

---

Exclusive: FoI request shows minister was warned by civil servants of ‘risk’ but focused instead on tech firm’s investment in UK

 

[honeybee13]

Project Sparrow. Nick Wallis was sent heavily redacted minutes (60%) but the BBC got hold of unredacted ones. There's some damning stuff in this about cover ups and highly inaccurate briefings.

Post Office accused of cover-up over secret Horizon documents

WWW.BBC.COM

---

BBC obtains unredacted minutes showing government knew of plan to sack experts who found Horizon IT bugs.

Link to Nick's blog.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/the-unredacted-project-sparrow-board-minutes/

 

[honeybee13]

Then there's this.

Horizon data was archived to a cheaper database by Fujitsu, from a government one that kept details of who accessed accounts and who changed details on the database. The information would probably have helped SPMs to prove their innocence.

Ex-Post Office boss ‘gave Fujitsu bonus contract despite warnings’ | Post Office Horizon scandal | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

---

Exclusive: Whistleblowers say Paula Vennells agreed to move archive, which risked destroying data that could clear operators

 

[tobyjugg2]

yep was reading that HB

Coincidence that data security was known to be compromised?

It was already known it was it seems?

[honeybee13]

Indeed. It's becoming a bit of a constant in this saga.

[honeybee13]

POL used racist descriptions to categorise Horizon victims.

https://archive.is/PXoEV