The Post Office Scandal

Still no Bob?

Where is he?

Well while we wait for him to show his face I'll put up another confirmed FACT that he seemed to think I was talking out of my arse about, namely that the Horizon systems were both very good systems with extremely few bugs in them.

The extremely few bugs though caused ruined life's to the sub-postmasters who were unfortunate to encounter one though.

The person who CONFIRMS what I was saying is none other than Ron Warmington who Bob emailed his best wishes too!

You can find it shortly after the 36 minute mark on here -

Sluffy wrote:

Don't you mean Tony Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Mrs Straw, Peter Mandelson, Jacqui Smith, Alan Johnson and Patricia Hewitt should all be arrested and charged?

And not before time, eh Bob?

You're so thick its unbelievable.

I could say muddled, puddled and deranged but I suppose thick will suffice.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

Don't you mean Tony Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Mrs Straw, Peter Mandelson, Jacqui Smith, Alan Johnson and Patricia Hewitt should all be arrested and charged?

And not before time, eh Bob?

You're so thick its unbelievable.

I could say muddled, puddled and deranged but I suppose thick will suffice.

Hahaha

You're getting like Wanderlust, where you make me laugh at most things you post now, like he used to do!

Bob, I don't have to go too far back in this thread to find numerous examples of how you've said The Powers That Be (TPTB) had their hands all over this right from the start, the endless references you name checked Blair Cabinet Members having 'involvement' with the cover-up, the disappointment you had when you felt the Cameron government continued the cover-up, and how thick/stupid/idiot/puddled/deranged (and a whole lot more) you viewed me as for initially suggesting that it seemed to me to be a 'gatekeeper' conspiracy within the Post Office managers that seemed to be the ones who covered up "their dirty laundry" as Jason Beer termed it and not a multi continuous government conspiracy from Tony Blair's time...

Ten Bobsworth wrote:Its just the way it was in the noughties; turn blind eyes and lie and destroy documents if you have to. I had hoped that things might change with a new government in 2010 but I can't say that they noticeably did.

You particularly chided me (daily) for not realising that the governments (starting with Blair's) and their civil servants who hold the only share in the POL would have known full well what was going on with POL - particularly when I suggested that they both relied on attendance at the POL Board and that if information wasn't reaching the POL Board they would be in the dark like everyone else.

(Did you not see today where Ian Henderson said more or less exactly what I've been saying all along, today at the Inquiry?)

You continued with your constant insults at me daily as the events at the Inquest unfolded as it became clearer and clearer to EVERYONE (probably YOU including but you'd likely prefer to die first than ever admit you got something wrong - especially that you got it wrong to me!) that the cover-up was almost certainly led by the PO EXECUTIVES led by really dodgy legal advice.

Sluffy wrote: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).

Everything I've said at the beginning of this thread has now be brought out during the Inquiry and nothing, I repeat NOTHING of your barking mad conspiracy theory of some Dark State led by Tony Blair and Jack Straw having their hand behind a massive twenty year old conspiracy, found not to even EXIST in their Inquests forensic scrutiny of all the documents at POL, Royal Mail, Fujitsu, and the external legal companies employed by POL.  There have also been no whistle blowers, and I suspect zero corroboration of continual governmental cover-ups from Blairs' time until now, in the evidence from the civil servants employed as Shareholder Executives (the owners of the single share of POL owned by the government).

There will be none from the three Ministers yet to face the Inquiry either (Ed Davey is already on record as to POL lying to him!!!).

You are (and have been) utterly away with the fairies with your bizarre self held personal biased based belief in a Blair led cover-up on something no one even knew needed a cover up until Ian Henderson and Ron Warrington discovered that the POL prosecutions had been unsafe right from the beginning from when they spoke with Gareth Jones and led to the Clarke advice in 2013 notifying POL of the same - YEARS AFTER BLAIR LEFT OFFICE!

Yet still you bang on about it - and you claim that I'M the one who needs to go in to the mental health hospital!!!

Ten Bobsworth wrote: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.

   

I'm not playing Sluffy's birdbrain games. He wants to divert attention from the fact that it was a Labour government that dumped SPM's into a shithole and that was content to leave them there whilst crowing over their 'achievements' and ignoring the warning flags that were being raised all around the realm.

Unfortunately Labour's replacement wasn't much better with 'Sir' Ed Davey continuing to turn a blind eye to anyone trying to sound the alarm.


Perkins and Vennells both tried to claim credit for the appointment of Second Sight but the reality seems to have been that it was pressure from James Arbuthnot and a few other MPS that resulted in an independent review. POL plainly didn't like it when 'independent' actually meant 'independent' and Second Sight identified POLs dodgy dealings in next to no time.

Messrs Henderson and Warmington came across as very different personalities but the country owes them both a debt of gratitude for sticking to their guns despite all attempts to spike them.

I'm NOT PLAYING GAMES you muppet, I'm simply understanding what actually happened and NOT what I WANTED TO HAVE HAPPENED LIKE YOU HAVE because you have some long outstanding hatred of the Blair government.

The Blair government DIDN'T "dump SPM's into a shithole" they introduced a much needed national computer system into the post office just like EVERY national company (private or in the public sector) has to have to function, in the twenty-first centaury

As it happens the system was VERY, VERY GOOD!!!

Don't believe me, well listen to your HERO Ron Warmington tell the world just that at the Inquiry here -

Sluffy wrote:Still no Bob?

Where is he?

Well while we wait for him to show his face I'll put up another confirmed FACT that he seemed to think I was talking out of my arse about, namely that the Horizon systems were both very good systems with extremely few bugs in them.

The extremely few bugs though caused ruined life's to the sub-postmasters who were unfortunate to encounter one though.

The person who CONFIRMS what I was saying is none other than Ron Warmington who Bob emailed his best wishes too!

You can find it shortly after the 36 minute mark on here -

The Blair government and later the Cameron one, and successive government since DID NOT "turn a blind eye to" what was going on - the set up was that governments left it to Royal Mail / Post Office to run itself with little to no external scrutiny of it and it was therefore up to RM/PO to deal with the complaints - which they did by believing what Fujitsu was telling them that the system worked spectacularly well (see Ron Warmington's testimony above), and that there was no unilateral remote access to it without SPMs knowledge and permission - and if you don't believe me, turn to 2:18:30 of another of your hero's Ian Henderson's testimony to the inquiry yesterday -




Yes the Royal Mail /Post Office had failures in how it prosecuted, namely in that the in-house criminal legal experts (notably Jarnail Singh) didn't know their job and led directly to the non training of Gareth Jenkins in his duties as an expert witness - ultimately this became apparent around the time of Second Sight's forensic investigation of cases which led to the finding of unilateral remote access by Fujitsu, which was known by Jenkins but not disclosed in court cases by him, and the Clarke advise basically instructing POL to cease using him and stop prosecuting people (2013 - several years after the Blair government left office in 2010).


Bob it is all there in black and white and you are plenty smart enough to see that, so the fact that you refuse to suggests that either like Wanderlust you can't accept to be seen to be wrong about anything or that you've had a bad experience under the Blair government and it has completely twisted your mind against them.

Either way there hasn't been a deep state, successive governmental cover-ups starting from Blair's time undertaken by The Powers That Be (TPTB), who had their hands all over this from the start.

The facts now prove that this is all about a POL cover up starting around 2013 when it was discovered that they had been prosecuting people based on unsafe witness's from Fujitsu and the cover up driven by questionable legal advice provided by their legal experts both in-house and external.

Did in extend beyond that, possibly, how much did Perkins know for instance, but it does seem that full knowledge didn't reach PO Board level and that the government really didn't know much if anything at that time based on Baroness Neville-Rolfe, who on behalf of the government instructed the new Chairman of POL Tim Parker to commission the Swift Report to find out what the hell was going on.

As I say Bob, it is all there for you to see but you refuse to do so - you think you know better than everyone else.

But you don't.

Bob, stop being childish and a rank bad loser.

I can stick up pictures and quotes too but they don't answer any questions do they, they just your way of AVOIDING them as you've consistently done with these two asked of you...

Sluffy wrote:Don't you deal in facts anymore?

Sluffy wrote:I understand that you persistently are unable to back up your conspiracy theory of a Blarite continual multi-governmental, twenty year plus, cover up with any evidence or facts whatsoever and are continually avoiding this simple question...

OK Bob, answer us this simple question then -

How did the Blair/Brown governments (1997 - 2010) hide the fact the people had wrongly been persecuted and prosecuted and even convicted on unsafe grounds, when the knowledge of an unsafe witness wasn't known until 2013 when Gareth Jenkins disclosed the fact of unilateral remote access from Fujitsu and not disclosed the fact in his witness statements as he was required to do?

Go on then.

Thing is though Bob is that you won't face up to them will you, because you are avoiding all the facts and can't explain how anyone (let alone Blair) can't cover up anything they didn't know about because it never happened until three years after his government had left office.


I might not be liked on here but I suspect even my greatest detractors will accept that I do my homework, and provide facts and links to them in everything that I say.

You just present yourself as an arrogant, who thinks he knows it all, and is better that everyone else, bully, who is contemptuous to us all.

I rather think you are like this in real life too, in which case I pity those who have to put up with you, they deserve much better.

Much, much better.

Kia ora to you.

The following is text and comment taken from the tweet below.

#PostOfficeScandal Earlier this evening on
@BBCNewsnight
hosted by
@vicderbyshire
, she was joined by former
@LibDems
leader Jo Swinson (
@joswinson
) and Second Sight investigator Ron Warmington (
@RonRwarming
). Explosive revelations as Swinson says Paula Vennell's former
@PostOffice
CEO lied to her in a face to face meeting and in a letter that was then published before Parliament!

Ron Warmington had just given evidence to the
@PostOffInquiry
earlier today.  This was the first time Jo Swinson and Ron had met.  

Ron said they had almost immediately upon appointment by the Post Office realised things had gone wrong on the prosecution front.  This was in September 2012.  Second Sight had made it abundantley clear they were forensic accountants not lawyers, they were making opinions on cases based on being accountants and not as lawyers.  He advised the Post Office to get advice on the prosecutions, they had wanted to go to the firm they had usually used during the prosecutions.  Warmington told them they must be mad, going to the firm that had got them into the mess in the first place, and suggested they go to the top firms which he named one or two and was told we cannot do that as the board will not tolerate that cost.

Victoria asked Ron how the Post Office and Paula Vennell's treat him when they were getting to the truth.  Initially they had appeared to want to co-operate and find the truth and both Ron and Ian had made it very clear that they shouldn't hire their firm if you want a whitewash or you won't help us get to the truth.  Ron was getting too old and he didn't need the work he told Newsnight, and said he would reject this job unless you agree to join us in the unrestricted search for the truth regardless of the consequences.  They were reassured by the top hierarchy at the Post Office on this.

As soon as they started to find 'stuff, nasty evidence of awful prosecution practices and sitting on top of really poor investigation processes'.  When they started to speak out about these not long after a change of General Counsel to Chris Aujard, the tide turned massively.  He said he had enough of this and even though he is not a quitter he was pulling the team out.  He was advised by his team there would be no one in the way of the wolves and the Postmasters if he did that, so he was persuaded to stay put.

Jo Swinson was then asked by Victoria, "you are yet to give evidence, can I ask you did Paula Vennell's lie to you?"

Jo Swinson replied : Yes

Victoria : Really?

Jo Swinson : Yes

Victoria : What did she say to you that was a lie?

Jo Swinson : So obviously during the unfolding of everything that happened as my time as Minister I was asking lots of questions, probing, seeking assurances, been told about the investigations that they had undertaken into all the prosecutions that had happened and she told me in categorical terms that no evidence had been unturned that had shown any of those prosecutions were unsafe in anyway AND that if anything did become discovered in the process of their investigations that would ever give any potential that any prosecution might be unsafe they had an immediate legal duty to disclose it and that they would comply with that duty very seriously.  I took that as a very categorical assurance to my face and in writing also that I published in parliament (
@UKParliament
/
@HouseofCommons
), in March 2015 and we now know from the subsequent court cases that was absolutely not true, they had not been complying with their disclosure duties.

WOW

So now we have on the public record Lord Arbuthnot saying that Paula Vennell's lied to him and the Select Committee and now Jo Swinson saying she lied to her face and in writing which was published in parliament.  

Watch the full piece below now

When Jo Swinson and  Sir Ed Davey finally appear at th'Inquiry are they both going to admit to being as thick as mince. Ten minutes with any competent SPM would be more than enough to know how useless and downright dodgy POL was.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:When Jo Swinson and  Sir Ed Davey finally appear at th'Inquiry are they both going to admit to being as thick as mince. Ten minutes with any competent SPM would be more than enough to know how useless and downright dodgy POL was.

But Bob, they KNEW.

Haven't you been telling us that it was a government cover-up from the very beginning?

They weren't as thick as mince at all, they KNEW that agent Gareth Jenkins had some years previously imbedded himself in Fujitsu and worked his way up in the organisation over many years to create the Horizon system that agent Blair commissioned for the PO to have forced upon them against their will.

Agent Jenkins cleverly concealed bugs in the Horizon system to randomly attack and destroy the lives of unsuspecting sub-postmasters and their families because he was following the master plan that wasn't told to him but which orders he carried out to the letter.

Agent Jenkins stealthily then went on a spree of untruthfully testifying in the prosecutions of these innocent to ensure there imprisonments.

Cleverley at the same time all this was underway, agents, Swinson and Davey, successfully imbedded themselves in the Liberal Democratic political organisation and diligently worked their way up in the party so as to be able to take the role of Minister for the Post Office on the brilliantly engineered fixing of the 2010 General Election, hung Parliament result and the subsequent Tory/Lib Dem coalition government, so as to take on the role of the successful ongoing government cover- up from their fellow agents such as agent Alan Johnson imbedded in the Blair government, which had been led so brilliantly by super Tony Blair.

The cover-up was so successful chiefly because there was nothing at all to cover up until agent Jenkins needlessly gave himself away in 2013 (years after super agent Tony Blair had retired from government (1996 to 2010)).

Agent Vennells did well to maintain damage limitation as long as she did but finally our super brained nemesis, Ten Bob, who was on to all of us from the very beginning, finally outed us to the world on the tiny, obscure, football forum, Bolton Nuts.


Bob, one of us is complete and utterly bonkers - and it certainly isn't me!

It was, of course, a time when Parliament and government had been exposed as comprising a significant number of knaves and nitwits through the expenses scandal exposed by the Daily Telegraph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal

The Freedom of Information Act had created a situation where the public could gain access to some of the grubbier end of government and I had used it myself to find out how much the Chairman of our local NHS had been trousering from the NHS honeypot. It was a lot.

When in 2008 Ben Wallace alerted Health Minister, Alan Johnson, the fobbing off reply was signed by Johnson's sidekick, Ann Keen MP (aka Mrs Expenses in the Mr and Mrs Expenses double act).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021775/Mr-Mrs-expenses-MP-couple-175-000-flat---house-just-30-minutes-away.html

The 'irregularities' (some would use another word) had been going on for FIVE YEARS at the time Wallace wrote to Johnson and they continued for another THREE  before the dam eventually broke. The guy was finally removed from office in 2011. No money was recovered.

I'll get round to reviewing the 'evidence' to the Inquiry of Messrs Johnson and McCartney in due course. Lets just say that I was not impressed by Sir Ian's possible memory loss in the bit I have seen so far.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/may/17/mps-expenses-ian-mccartney-labour

This has NOTHING to do with the POST OFFICE SCANDAL.

You are mentally obsessed with things that have no relevance or bearing on how very basically a Fujitsu employee wasn't properly trained by (at the time) a Royal Mail  employee on how to give evidence at Criminal trials, is what the PO scandal stemmed from and was covered up when known by the PO from 2013 onwards.

NO ONE knew there was anything that even needed covering-up until 2013.

Sluffy wrote:This has NOTHING to do with the POST OFFICE SCANDAL.

You are mentally obsessed with things that have no relevance or bearing on how very basically a Fujitsu employee wasn't properly trained by (at the time) a Royal Mail  employee on how to give evidence at Criminal trials, is what the PO scandal stemmed from and was covered up when known by the PO from 2013 onwards.

NO ONE knew there was anything that even needed covering-up until 2013.

You're so thick its unbelievable, Sluffy.

Interesting day yesterday but I had to play catch up later as I was out on the golf course all morning and had a family visitor in the afternoon.

I haven't caught up on it all yet but first up was, Graham Ward, one of POL's senior execs who worked in security.

Nick Wallis wrote yesterday:

Graham Ward is in trouble





 
This is Graham Ward, former Post Office Investigator, now working for the Metropolitan Police as part of its economic crime team.
Ward gave evidence this morning after being recalled to the Inquiry over an explicit denial he made in February which turned out not to be true.
I suspect these are the sort of frontline grunts we'll see ending up being charged with criminal offences if the Met and CPS ever do get their act together.


Next up was some senior official from the CWU, called Tony Kearns. Appearances can be deceptive but Kearns just didn't look or sound trustworthy. The lawyer representing the NFSP seems quite nice, for that worse than useless body, and she tried unsuccessfully to pin Kearns down on the fact that the issues with Horizon were 'in the public domain' by 2003/4. Kearns' defence was that he had moved up in the CWU in 2002 and it was nowt to do with him.

Then there was Kay Linnell, a chartered accountant since 1979. Kay had worked for quite a number of years for HMRC, at a very senior level, on the prosecution of fraudsters. Some were quite well known; no prizes for guessing.

Kay opened up her evidence by thanking everyone that had worked on exposing this scandal whilst indicating that, in her long career, she had never encountered the like of the snakes that ran the Post Office.

My patience is running out with you now Bob.

You claim government and Board level concealment and cover up of persecution of innocent sub-postmasters from 1998/9 onwards initiated by the Blair government.

That clearly did not happen.

What happened was that low level staff at Royal Mail's Post Office Division (later POL) such as Ward (above) were wrongly amending and falsifying expert witness statements from Fujitsu employees in respect of bugs and unilateral access to the Horizon system and due to lack of legal training in being expert witnesses, the Fujitsu staff accepted these amendments and changes to their evidence to be given in court without question.

This continued over the years until it eventually came to light to Post Office senior management in 2013 with the Clarke Advice.


How the fuck would Tony Blair and his government have even known of the existence of folk like Graham Ward, let alone instruct him and his mates to cover up the truth and instead lock up sub-postmasters for stealing non-existent money???

As much as you desperately want it to be there is NO evidence of political or civil service knowledge of the persecution and prosecution of innocent people based on false evidence by the likes of Ward and the signing off of testimony presented to the courts by the likes of Gareth Jenkins of Fujitsu.


By Christ Bob, how would it suit Blair to to KNOW about and LEAD a COVER UP and expect that future CONCERVATIVE governments would continue to COVER UP such a gross miscarriage of NATIONAL  justice???

The Conservatives would simply expose the scandal to make MASSIVE political gain out of it for decades to come - look at how Labour locked up innocent people than tell the truth - they aren't be trusted to govern ever again - sort of thing.

How would it suit the civil servants (people like me, remember) to facilitate such a governmental cover up, when we (myself for instance) had nothing to gain from it and everything to lose by it if it was ever discovered???

I wouldn't go to jail to save any elected politicians face - and neither would any others public servant do so.



I'm happy to be proved wrong on this but you simply have nothing but your hatred to support your 'conspiracy theory' and ALL the evidence dug up so far from the independent public statutory inquiry (ie free of any political influence under judicial control - see below the Constitution of the United Kingdom - judicial, Parliament, executive) shows absolutely none either.

The Inquiry is showing mountains of evidence showing exactly what I've been saying, namely wrongful persecution and prosecutions based on flawed belief in the Horizon system followed by wrongful legal testimony, which was discovered in 2013 and then not acted upon.


Constitution of the United Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=The%20UK%20Supreme%20Court%20recognises,Parliament%20have%20special%20constitutional%20status.

Its the NFSP ex-Gen Sec up today. What an absolute nightmare of a witness he's proving to be.

Not unexpected though. No wonder that Sir Alan Bates and the JFSA threw their hands up. Its Julian Blake that's been handed the Inquiry gig. If he had any hair he'd be tearing it out

George Thomson could be a caricature. He claimed this morning that the governments appointees on the POL board knew about the Horizon defects but didn't tell him.

I doubt he would have listened anyway, he's that boneheaded.

The core participants are going to have a chance to question him this afternoon. Good luck to 'em. Its Friday and they'll be off to the nearest wine bar for a laugh whilst shaking their heads afterwards.

The following, if you strip away all the baggage attached to Thompson, was the important bit to what he was saying today...

George Thomson, the former leader of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters (NFSP), told a long-running inquiry: "The Horizon system is not the scandal, the Post Office stupidity on steroids handling of the situation is the scandal."

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for offences including theft on the strength of faulty data from the Horizon IT system.

Mr Thomson said that the number of sub-postmasters who had been prosecuted was a "tiny percentage" of the 100,000 people who have used Horizon over 25 years.

Mr Thomson said the Post Office's "mishandling of the situation" has been "so catastrophic" for sub-postmasters, the brand and Royal Mail group.

If so isn't that just the same as what Ron Warmington said here..?

Sluffy wrote:I'll put up another confirmed FACT...namely that the Horizon systems were both very good systems with extremely few bugs in them.

The extremely few bugs though caused ruined life's to the sub-postmasters who were unfortunate to encounter one though.

The person who CONFIRMS what I was saying is none other than Ron Warmington who Bob emailed his best wishes too!

You can find it shortly after the 36 minute mark on here -

...and what Ian Henderson said basically throughout his whole testimony to the Inquiry...



Wasn't the issues more to do with the failure to understand and equate that there were some issues with bugs that had MASSIVE personal impact on those who suffered them and that the Post Office initially didn't believe there were any based on Fujitsu assurances - and when these assurance became to be known to be false, the PO EXCUTIVES deliberately hid the facts of unsafe prosecutions instead of facing up to them and rectifying them?

That is the nub of the scandal is it not?

Horizon is robust, says ex-boss of postmasters' union
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyxxz799vxko

Indeed this is what your HERO Nick Wallis said about it...

This scandal could have been avoided if the NFSP had listened to its Subpostmasters, rather than take assurances from the Post Office that there was nothing to see, or worry about.

I hope the NFSP execs reading this can sleep at night. They [the Post Office] sold you a lie, lads. And you bought it. And you peddled it for them.

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/12/nfsp-attempts-reverse-ferret.html

If Tony Kearns of the CWU didn't look or sound trustworthy, yesterdays witness, George Thomson from the NFSP, looked summat like this:

I think Nick Wallis may  have missed yesterday's proceedings. A pity imo but maybe it was a blessing  for him if he had other engagements and didn't have to suffer the belligerent gibberish of Gobshite George.

Anyroad here's the Grauniads anodyne efforts to report yesterday's theatre:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/21/former-post-office-operators-leader-denies-betraying-his-membership

Did anyone notice that the Grauniad described the NFSP as an 'association' in its limp effort to report on Gobshite George's gobsmacking performance at th'Inquiry on Friday? It is now but, for almost all of the years that it was the Post  Office's partner in crime against its members, the NFSP was a registered Trade Union.

Its no surprise though, the ineptitude (or worse) of mainstream media was a major factor in the miscarriages of justices persisting and going virtually unreported for so long.

Here's a bit from Boncey's pal, Professor Tim, about the scandal.