The Post Office Scandal

boltonbonce wrote:Must be more to this Post Office business than I thought.

That's interesting, Boncey. Do you think that teddy's are more curious than MPs, Civil Servants, government Ministers and the Boards of Royal Mail and the Post Office?

I do hope they had their thinking heads on today and that they also get the chance to watch tomorrow when representatives of the SPMs get a chance to question that Parsons cove. You know, the one that was winding Blakey up today.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:
That's interesting, Boncey. Do you think that teddy's are more curious than MPs, Civil Servants, government Ministers and the Boards of Royal Mail and the Post Office?

You really DO think you are smarter than everyone else, don't you Bob.

Ten of thousands of people you've accused there of being dumb.

Why is it then that not one of them of been a whistler blower, gone to the press, spilt there story even now to the likes of Nick Wallis?

Could it be that weren't stupid at all and simply didn't know anything was wrong because people like today's witness at the Inquiry, the key defence solicitor Andy Parsons tried to hide almost everything by using 'legal privilege' to stop EVERYTHING being disclosed beyond anyone not included in the PO officers cover-up...

The basic thrust of privilege is that lawyers can assert confidentiality over information which passes between them and their client. This is a proportional exercise based on the extent to which the information qualifies as legal advice (all of which is arguable), but the advantages can be huge.

If something is deemed privileged it doesn’t have to be disclosed (handed over to the public, your opponents or a court) – ie it can be kept secret. Privilege is regularly abused in legal circles and Blake did his best to demonstrate that Parsons was a serial abuser, citing a presentation he gave to Alice Perkins, Paula Vennells and the Project Sparrow team in 2013 which stated:

“A reminder, legal privilege = vital to success. Do not discuss any legal advice or anything to do with Subpostmaster settlements with anyone outside the post office [including] JFSA, Second Sight, Subpostmasters… the Department for Business and Industrial Strategy, [That;s the government - Sluffy] Members of Parliament, even your teams, unless absolutely necessary.”

Blake [JASON Beer's deputy today - Sluffy] wondered if this strongly-worded policy given to the very top bods at the Post Office: “was in some way responsible for a lack of information transferring within the company?”
“I don’t think anyone would have interpreted that as somehow putting a block on information being passed up to senior management”, replied Parsons.
“It says… don’t discuss any legal advice even with your own team”, replied Blake.
Parsons was unruffled: “that’s not just advice that I’m providing, that is the state of the law on legal advice privilege, which provides that legal advice privilege doesn’t extend to the entire client organisation but only those groups within the organisation who need to receive that advice.”

Blake took him to the example of a Post Office counter located in a branch of McColls which in April 2018 had trouble balancing due to an issue which was plainly the Post Office’s fault. The only way to fix this was by using remote access. Given the Bates v Post Office litigation was swinging its way towards trial, and the Post Office’s defence was based on the idea that remote access was not possible, this was a problem. But how to stop the truth getting out? Parsons leapt into action, telling the Post Office:

“We the legal team need to take charge of this process. Whatever documents are produced are likely to be disclosable and I would like as far as possible for this to be covered by privilege or have controlled their content.” Parsons instructed all work on the intervention stop, with all emails “past and future” sent to his colleague Jonathan Gribben. He finally demanded Fujitsu “produce for us a full and privileged note on what has happened and why there is no alternative but to edit the data”. Parsons warned “I understand that this is going to cause operational problems and risks in this branch, but if not handled properly, this could be disastrous for the group litigation.”

Blake observed this was:

“a technical issue with a branch. Not a claimant’s branch. A random branch that is affected that needs a correction, and your advice is, let’s cover this in privilege because it could be disastrous for the group litigation.“

Parsons was, again, unruffled. “All of these decisions are context-specific”, he said. “We’re in the middle of a large piece of litigation, an issue has arisen that is related to one of the key issues in the litigation. I think it’s appropriate for any organisation to avail itself of legal privilege to investigate that issue.”

Parsons found it less easy to defend a privilege argument inserted into an email written by a junior employee. During the Bates v Post Office litigation, a newly-qualified lawyer called Amy Prime had drafted an email to Rodric Williams at the Post Office who was seeking advice after the Subpostmasters’ lawyers Freeths had asked for versions of the Post Office’s criminal investigation guidelines, the oldest of which dated back to 1998.

Prime asked Parsons to take a look at her draft response. He responded: “try to always spell out exactly what is required from the client, even if that is nothing” and then inserted into the email:

“For now, we’ll do what we can to avoid disclosure of these guidelines and try to do so in a way that looks legitimate. However, we are ultimately withholding a key document, and this may attract some criticism from Freeths. If you disagree with this approach, do let me know. Otherwise, we’ll adopt this approach until such time as we sense the criticism is becoming serious.”

Blake reminded Parsons this was about “guidelines that led to people’s investigation, subsequent prosecution [and] conviction.”
“No”, cavilled Parsons. “The request was for investigation guidelines in the broader sense, so it could have included any form of investigation.“
“OK,” accepted Blake “So not limited to criminal prosecutions, but including investigations that led to criminal prosecutions.”
“Correct.”
“Including investigations that led to people wrongly losing their jobs.“
“Yes, I guess so, if you’re going to draw that line directly.“
“Investigations that led to people becoming bankrupt?“
“Yes.“
“And irrespective of your reference to doing so in a way that looks legitimate, you are saying that you are advising a client that you can withhold what you considered at the time to be a key document until the criticism is such that it’s becoming serious?”

Parsons admitted the email was “poorly worded”, adding a rare “I regret sending it”, but he held his ground. “Having looked at it again”, he told the Inquiry, “I believe there were legitimate grounds to not disclose those two documents at that point in time.”

Parsons built his wealth, career and reputation defending the Post Office’s ultimately indefensible case. It doesn’t look like he will be losing any sleep over it.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/post-office-lawyer-postmasters-are-liars/


Christ on a bike, Bob, the man you are avidly following in all of this, Nick Wallis, has even come around to understanding this wasn't a government stich up lasting twenty years, it is all about Jarnail Singh not knowing his job and not training Gareth Jenkins that he needs to disclose EVERYTHING as an expert witness EVEN IF IT HELPS THE OTHER SIDE IN COURT, and that fact not being picked up until 2013 and there after actively suppressed from going any further, even to reaching the ears of the government, by high paid solicitors and Barristers acting (as they should) in the best interests of their client the Post Office.

The thing here is that there is a line between doing the right thing for your client in civil cases and that line crosses over when they become criminal cases - Parsons actively did not adhere to that as evidenced above - by wrapping up an incident of external access to Horizon by concealing it in 'legal privilege' when there was a criminal case going on at the same time based totally on the point that POL claimed that there was NO external access to Horizon!!!

It's there Bob, all being rolled out in front of your very eyes but you don't want to see it because these FACTS keep getting in the way of your long standing entrenched bias and prejudice against the Blair government.

No fool like an old fool as they say.

Study of a Corporate Psychopath at Play




Courtesy of Nick Wallis


No ifs or buts about it, Nick, Parsons is 'the exemplar of a broken system'. There's more than one Andy Parsons practising law and there's more than a few 'economy with the truth' geezers in Parliament. They have a tendency to rise to the top like ... well, you know. Take your pick.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/13/lawyer-advised-post-office-to-adopt-cold-approach-and-not-apologise-inquiry-hears

Bob, the link you provided was to the Guardian and NOT Nick Wallis the Nick Wallis article is here...

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/post-office-lawyer-postmasters-are-liars/

...and did not contain either the headline (you've enlarged for effect) or the sentence you wrote?

Have you wrote those yourself or is there a separate Nick Wallis 'confirmation bias group' you are part of?



And fwiw this is from today at the Inquest between Blake and Andy Parsons

10.40am: Blake moves on to the issue of information being shared by Post Office to the government. Meeting notes show that the Post Office wanted the sharing of papers to be 'kept to a minimum'. Blake points out the ideas expressed in the notes of saying things rather than writing them down is similar to Parsons' advice covered in the inquiry yesterday. Parsons says there was a general concern in the Post Office about sharing confidential information with government officials as they might then be shared elsewhere.

...or in plain words POL HID FROM THE GOVERNMENT WHAT WAS GOING ON.

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/post-office-live-solicitor-talked-of-forcing-claimants-to-burn-money/5120026.article

Do you still believe the government was covering-up for decades something IT DID NOT KNOW ABOUT?

Sorry Sluffy but you're so thick its unbelievable.

It seems that lawyers working in/for the Post Office were trying to get the governments own employees to keep schtum despite the risks that entailed for the employees and the relevant ministers.

Various members of the Shareholder Executive/UK Government Investment officials are due to be questioned next month. I'd expect them to be asked whether they did keep schtum or not. It  should be brought up in witness statements. Watch this space.

Its usually the case that those with an interest in cover-ups try to avoid paper trails, so its quite possible that there won't be one and we might be back to the 'I don't recall' excuse that's been trotted out so often in these proceedings.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:Sorry Sluffy but you're so thick its unbelievable.

It seems that lawyers working in/for the Post Office were trying to get the governments own employees to keep schtum despite the risks that entailed for the employees and the relevant ministers.

Various members of the Shareholder Executive/UK Government Investment officials are due to be questioned next month. I'd expect them to be asked whether they did keep schtum or not. It  should be brought up in witness statements. Watch this space.

Its usually the case that those with an interest in cover-ups try to avoid paper trails, so its quite possible that there won't be one and we might be back to the 'I don't recall' excuse that's been trotted out so often in these proceedings.

Well if I'm so thick then why don't you explain to the class how the successive governments knew about the cover-up for the last twenty years if their own employees (Civil Servants) never told then there was a problem to cover-up?

(Remember me telling you about 'gatekeepers'?)

Anyway that isn't the point Julian Blake was making - it was that Parsons was telling the Post Office NOT TO TELL THE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS in the first place SO THAT THEY COULD NOT THEN TELL THE GOVERNMENT because if they did so the content then became known in the public arena and thus NO LONGER COVERED  by legal Privilege (and legal privilege meant covering those only who received the information (the POL executives) from having to disclose anything about the information to anyone else - ie THAT is the cover-up.

Sluffy wrote:Parsons says there was a general concern in the Post Office about sharing confidential information with government officials as they might then be shared elsewhere.

...or in plain words POL HID FROM THE GOVERNMENT WHAT WAS GOING ON

And if to PROVE my point above this is what Wallis writes today (NOTE that the government EMPLOYEES, the Civil Servants holding the government's share had already been closed down to only accepting from the PO EXECUTIVES what the PO Board had been told as per the minutes of their meetings...)

(And if you recall the Clarke advice was blocked by Perkins going to the board by forcing Crichton to sit outside on the naughty chair and the Swift Report was blocked from going to the board on legal advice from Jane MacLeod...)

Parsons’ Privilege Problem

The Post Office’s borderline paranoid approach to document dissemination was picked over yesterday, but escalated today. It seems as if the Post Office, advised by Parsons, was refusing to give written information about the Bates v Post Office litigation to its only shareholder – the government – and had suggested in a draft protocol that civil servants should only receive oral updates.

The mandarins were more than a bit put out by this. One of them wrote to Rodric Williams (Parsons’ internal counterpart at the Post Office) setting out their position:

Alex Chisholm is the accounting officer for the Post Office and as such is accountable to Parliament for its actions. In order to properly fulfil this role, he requires full and comprehensive information on the progress of this litigation. This will not be possible if the Post Office is not willing to provide written updates. We revised our requirements to provide for updates following reports to the Board to reduce any administrative burden as far as possible, but we cannot agree to a protocol which includes no obligation on the Post Office to report progress in writing in the litigation.

Blake asked what was the problem with giving the shareholder written information about the litigation they were funding.
Parsons replied: “I was aware that there was an issue with information sharing with UKGI, particularly around sharing privileged information with UKGI and how to do it in a way that would maintain privilege.
Blake asked him if this was a concern he “personally” had.
Parsons replied: “I would always be concerned about issues around privilege and making sure the Post Office were properly advising those issues.”

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/post-office-legal-strategy-force-the-claimants-to-burn-money/

I'm quite looking forward to Second Sight appearing on Tuesday. I hope it might help restore some faith in human nature after this parade of liars, amnesiacs and sociopathic tosspots.

When they appear next month, politicians will have to decide whether they are going to play the numbnut or the knave card. Or to put it another way, 'we were told blatant lies' (and were too stupid to see it) or the alternative.

Place your bets.

See, once again you prove my point, namely you've judged them all already without even bothering to hear what they have to say.

They are already guilty in your eyes, just like Ken Anderson was guilty in nearly everyone else's eyes apart from you and I because we had the KNOWLEDGE and FACTS to base our informed views on, unlike the lynch mob did.

At the end of the day this is all simple, a national computer system was rolled out that lasted for just over 10 years to 2010 - an updated system replaced it in 2010 and is still in operation).  Nether weren't a disaster by any means, they deal/dealt with over 10,000 post offices daily processing millions if not many billions of transactions during that time.

The problem was that there were some post offices that were effected by bugs and no one knew that Fujitsu had remote access, therefore the assumption must be that any shortfall could only come from the SPM or their staff.

Prosecutions were done on that basis and Jenkins (the father of the system) gave prosecution evidence as an expert witness (without being trained to do so) and did not disclose the whole truth.

This was only found out in 2013 by first the Rose report, then SS interim report and the Clarke advice they all came along in just a matter of weeks to each other.

How in your world Bob was ANYONE covering ANYTHING up, to that point?

Nobody knew about it until then!!!

From then on IT WAS COVERED-UP but clearly by the Post Office end.

The Clarke advice was NOT reported to the PO Board (Crichton was left sitting outside the meeting!)

The legal 'experts' then got involved and some rather dubious things happened - for instance Simon Clarke when doing the 'sift' decided the Misra case did not need to be told that the witness whose testimony sent her to jail was 'unsafe', that superstar Brian Altman seemed to have been 'played' by POL, that Parson's was covering EVERYTHING up by using legal privilege - the upshot was that the PO Board, the government shareholder who sits on the board and thus the government were all kept in the dark, so much so that the government had need to INSTRUCT Perkins to commission a report (The Swift Report) to get to the bottom of what was going on - and when he did, it was promptly stopped from being seen by the board (by Jane MacLeod), and thus the government shareholder who sits on the board and because of this the government as well, were all none the wiser!

As a last resort the POL (led by their legal advisors) even tried to get the judge to sack himself ffs!!!

It's even been revealed at the Inquiry that both the Share Executive and the government DID NOT WANT TO TAKE THIS COURSE OF ACTION.

All this Bob, ALL OF IT, has been paraded before your very eyes over several weeks and months now yet you've made your mind up based on one personal incident you were involved in over twenty years ago, that you KNOW how the government works, how the health service works, how civil servants all work and how the post office works - and that is that they are ALL fucking useless and corrupt.

You are BONKERS Bob, complete and utter bonkers.

Face up to the FACTS.

You can't though can you?

Sir Alan Bates!

In England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island, in constituency after constituency, pillars of the community in their hundreds were dismissed and prosecuted, some were imprisoned and some committed suicide whilst the Post Office closed sub -post offices and demanded money from SPMs with menaces.

It was the talk of every one of the constituencies involved and MPs and other elected representatives would have had to have inhabited the Planet Zog not to have realised that serious questions needed to be asked.

Who asked these questions, who did they ask them of and what answers did they get? It had been going on for nearly ten years when former Home Secretary asked Post Office Minister, Pat McFadden, in Parliament and she was simply and disgracefully fobbed off.

The Inquiry needs to establish how many others were fobbed off, by whom and when? There must be accountability and the worst offenders should face imprisonment themselves.

P.S. Sluffy is a complete wazzock.

Maybe I am a complete wazzock but I know enough to listen to both sides of any story and not to make my mind up until I know all the facts.

Fact 1 - Sub-postmasters were prosecuted on the evidence of an expert witness (the man who created the Horizon system in the first place) that there was no remote access and therefore the system was completely in the control of that post office.

Fact 2 - the bugs (when found) only effected a tiny fraction of the total Post Offices (one bug was called 64 because in only effected 64 out of 10,500 post offices and the other was called something like 27 because it only effected 27 out of 10,500 post offices.

That's not to say people weren't wrongly accused and imprisoned for no fault of there own but the issue was tiny in terms of the billions of transactions that must have taken place since the introduction of the first Horizon system in 1999,

Fact - 3 There was growing concern that something wasn't right but Fujitsu, Gareth Jenkins never informed that there was unilateral remote access - and that remote access could only be enacted by full knowledge of sub-postmaster and had only been used on ONE occasion in 2001 (iirc?).

Fact - 4 As the years rolled on and more and more SPMs were facing shortfalls and prosecutions, questions were being asked by many MP's on behalf of there constituents to the government department responsible for the PO (Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), who in turn sought answers from Royal Mail and later the Post Office, who replied that the system was only accessible by the sub-postmasters or their staff, Jujitsu was unaware of any bugs in the system apart from that one off instance in 2001, so therefore any shortfall could only come from the sub-post office itself.

Fact - 5 The truth only came out about two known errors Error 64 and Error 27 (forgive me if the numbers are slightly incorrect, I simply do not have the time tonight to search out the correct numbers) when Jenkins disclosed them himself to SS in 2013.

Fact - 6 If you really have been following the Inquiry with an open mind (clearly you haven't) you will have seen from that time on, the major players in suppressing the spread of this knowledge have been senior executives within the PO aided (and abetted?) by legal advise both from within and external to the PO, supplied by in-house legal staff or external solicitors (Bond Dickinson - Civil Law and Cartwright King - Criminal Law).

Fact -7 Time and time again since 2013, the known fact of a unsafe witness (Jenkins) has been kept away from the PO Board (if it had gone to the PO Board then the inquiry would by now have produced the minuets of them).

By keeping the PO Board being unaware of the fact, resulted in the Shareholder Executive being also unaware (the Sh-ex having board representation) and the fact that by Sh-ex being blind to it, it also meant the government was blind to it as well.

Clearly the government knew something wasn't right and in 2015 called in Vennells et al, to face the Parliamentary Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, cross party committee to be questioned on wtf was happening and thereafter because they clearly learnt nothing from Team Vennells, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, instructed the new Chair of POL to commission what turned out to be the Swift Report, which yet again never managed to reach the POL Board because of legal advice from Jane MacLeod.

Fact - 8 In the end the truth finally was revealed by the Bates v Post Office High Court verdict (even having the the PO's hired legal big guns to try and make him quit the case before the end verdict) and the detail now being revealed by the ongoing inquiry.


I've yet to hear what the Civil Servants and politicians have yet to say but as a former public servant myself I would expect that if the Civil Servants had knowledge of anything untoward they would report it to the relevant Minister (why wouldn't they - it's not there problem to worry about) and accordingly document the fact to cover their back (that's how it works).

As for the politicians I would expect they knew just as much as their Civil Servants had reported to them and what the Royal Mail / Post Office had replied to them directly with.

However I have an open mind and look forward to hearing their answers put to them by the inquiry.

I can't say that I am keen on knighthoods. More scoundrels have been awarded knighthoods than you could shake a stick at but Alan Bates absolutely deserves public recognition and public gratitude for his long-running fight for justice. 

So congratulations without doubt and please keep going Alan, the job isn't finished yet.

https://news.sky.com/story/post-office-campaigner-alan-bates-given-knighthood-but-insists-theres-still-work-to-do-13153246

If I was Alan Bates, I would tell them to shove the knighthood up their arse. It doesn’t mean anything anymore after the amount of singers and actors have received it.

Apparently Sluffy thinks the government knew nowt until 2015. If they knew nowt they were as daft as he is. As Professor Richard Moorhead put it, quite possibly in another but related context, 'crass does not come close.


Will we find out how much they knew? That remains to be seen and may yet depend upon how far the Inquiry will go or be funded to delve into the genesis of this scandal.

There will be a new government along very soon and it might include individuals with a personal or political interest in leaving a few stones unturned. I hope that doesn't happen; I fear it might.

karlypants wrote:If I was Alan Bates, I would tell them to shove the knighthood up their arse. It doesn’t mean anything anymore after the amount of singers and actors have received it.

I agree. It means nothing. To think,that hairy arsed chimp Rod Stewart is a Knight of the Realm, and Nat Lofthouse isn't, sticks in the craw.

Do you think Eddie Davies knew everything that Phil Gartside was doing with the £200m of his money that he ended up having to write off?

Was Eddie as daft and as beyond crass as I am?

Or did he believe in someone and trust in what they were told and shown.


The Post Office didn't know there was unilateral remote access from Fujitsu until 2013, so how could the government know any differently?

They believed what the Post Office/Royal Mail was telling them in good faith as Eddie was believing what Gartside was no doubt telling him in good faith.


Just because you seem to have a hatred of the Blair government (even suggesting the a future Labour government from next month on will continue to conspire to cover things up) doesn't mean that they or Royal Mail (at the time) could possibly have known about this - how could they???

You're much smarter than the rest of us, so tell the class how Tony Blair and Jack Straw knew about Fujitsu's unilateral remote access FOURTEEN YEARS before the Post Office found out about it (the Clarke advice 2013).

Go on then genius.

So you can't then!





It's all just your looney, barking mad, Blairite hatred based, wacky, baseless, conspiracy theory of yours, which you can't back up with even one iota of factual evidence.