The Post Office Scandal

As for slugs Bob, they are the good guys.

They are beneficial animals to have in a garden as they are a valuable part of the composting process – that's why you've probably seen them feasting in your compost bin, helping to turn plant waste into compost for gardeners to use. So, slugs and snails can be a gardener's friend and should be welcomed in our gardens.

Royal Horticultural Society



https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/slugs-and-snails

Poor Sluffy

I may be poor in many ways but I'm not a twisted, bitter, hateful and spiteful person like you are Bob.

You can't get over the fact that you didn't get your own way on something with your local Health Service provider twenty-five years or so ago and its stewed and festered in your head ever since.

You carry a grudge - and it shows.

The Inquiry isn't going to show a government cover-up from 1999 for one simple reason - there wasn't one.

No doubt you'll then believe this Inquiry was just part of the ongoing cover up from Blairs time too.

One of us is completely warped in the head, Bob.

And it certainly isn't me.

You're not bonkers, are you Sluffy?
You're not bonkers, are you Sluffy?
You're not bonkers, are you Sluffy?
You're not bonkers, are you Sluffy?
You're not bonkers, are you Sluffy?

Just keep telling yourself that and you'll probably believe it.

And btw the guy that was milking the NHS of a small fortune did get sacked eventually but it was covered up not just once and not just locally but over and over and over again in Parliament and beyond. I never really did find out why but I did discover, at an early date, that he was an habitual liar with connections in influential places and that the financials were only part of the story. I discovered a lot but always knew that I was only scratching the surface.

More significantly, I also discovered that the number of MPs that will put their heads above the parapet, when there's stuff that TPTB want covered up, is negligible. Unfortunately there is no shortage of cretins and scumbags that will say that there's nowt wrong when its plain that there's a lot wrong. Its just the way it is.

I expect Sir Alan Bates experience has been quite similar but, in his case, over a much more extended period.

You've just let your mask slip, Bob.

You've just spilled out your hurt, hatred, bias and prejudice you carry from an event that happened a quarter of a century ago.

It certainly doesn't mean that what you may have experienced happened again here - and we've only heard your side of the story of what happened in the case of your health authority - who knows maybe they did get to find out what happened was what you found but maybe they couldn't PROVE it in a court of law perhaps - we just don't know (and the includes YOU).

I've laid out in post 380 above a quite reasonable and logical scenario of what process McFadden, Davey, Swinson and the civil servants may well have done to examined the MP's concerns of their constituents and certainly found NO evidence of any cover-up by anyone with all cases being presented to unbiased criminal court judges and juries of men and women who found them guilty.

I could have been one of the jury at the time - so could YOU, so could any of us -  who listened to all the evidence put before them and found the sub-postmasters guilty on that evidence.

At that time we ALL would Bob - even you could not refute that evidence put before you.

You might believe Horizon is faulty but an INDEPENDANT EXPERT WITNESS states on oath that the system has no bugs in it, it can't be accessed remotely without the knowledge of the sub-postmaster, and any shortfall can only occur at the sub-post office itself.

How would you KNOW that to be a lie???



You wouldn't.

How then would you think the Ministers and civil servants were covering up something that they also knew NOTHING ABOUT.



You can call me all the names under the Sun, Bob, but it doesn't change a thing, namely TPTB, Blair and his government, the civil servants, McFadden, Davey, Swinson Uncle Tom Cobley and all, simply DID NOT KNOW that the prosecutions INDEPENDENT EXPERT WITNESSES were not disclosing relevant information that would have stopped dead ALL the prosecutions happening.

It is only from 2012 onwards that this became known to PO management.

The suppressing of this knowledge from that point on IS the scandal.

It has nothing to do with Tony Blair onwards until 2012/13 like you clearly want it to be.

If you could put your hatred to one side for a moment you would clearly see that.



But you won't...


You prefer to carry on the grudge and hatred that has for years consumed and warped you instead.

I pity you really.

I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Its not at all difficult to see how these sort of scandals arise if you get the likes of Sluffy holding any positions of responsibility in publicly funded organisations.

James Arbuthnot MP and David Jones MP smelt a rat in 2009, according to Nick Wallis.
Why did it take so long? I had smelt the Post Office rat by 2001 and I understand that the same rat had been smelt by a number of SPMs in the North West by that time too. 

Julie Wolstencroft (Cleveleys) certainly had and she proved to be capable of dealing with them. She lost her sub-Post Office to the rats but the rats had to find c.£180k to buy her off and buy her silence.  

It wasn't long before Alan Bates smelt the same rats in North Wales. I'm sure he spared no effort in trying to deal with them but it did take him a lot longer than Julie and he still hasn't got his money, so far as I know.

Why don't you just answer the question as to how ANYONE (let alone in a position of authority) KNEW that ALL THE TRIALS were based on the FALSE TESTOMONY from the key prosecution witnesses?

The juries of the sub-postmasters peers, believed the key prosecution witnesses, the judge's would no doubt have pointed this key testimony out to the juries in their summing up's and 99.8% of the prosecutions ended in a conviction.

The issue effected an average of just 0.52% of all sub-post office branches annually.

Why would these miniscule occurrences where there had been virtually a 100% conviction rate at criminal courts up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom give cause for doubt that there was something wrong and that multiple successive governments and Ministers of ALL the three major political parties FROM 1998 ONWARDS FOR THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS were in the process of a huge, national, cover-up???

NO ONE KNEW - so how could their be a cover-up by those who didn't even know something needed to be covered-up???

It doesn't make any sense you crackpot!

You've lost the plot completely.

You have no evidence at all to even back up your claim - just your stewed hatred of something that pissed you off under the Blair government TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.

No one has any evidence that there was any attempt of any sort of governmental cover-up until Jenkins dropped himself in it, in 2012 ffs!

And the Inquiry report findings from Sir Wyn Williams will reflect that too.



...and when he does, you'll start banging on that he's part of the cover-up too...!!!

How long did it take for Ian Henderson to 'smell a rat'? Not very long, it seems. Not very long at all.

The rats tried to threaten him, they'd ruin him, bankrupt him. Henderson had seen active service in th'army before he qualified as an accountant and he wasn't going to be intimidated by any pipsqueak rat.

Why didn't it take him long?

Could it be that he was a top drawer SPECIALIST who investigates FRAUD WORLDWIDE. with a background with the Criminal Cases Review Commission, perhaps???

Mr Beer: In terms of your prior career before Second Sight, you were Manager of the Investigations Division at Lloyd’s of London, with responsibility for investigating fraud worldwide; is that correct?

Ian Henderson: Correct.

Mr Beer: You were subsequently Head of Investigations at what was then the country’s largest financial services regulator?

Ian Henderson: That’s correct as well.

Mr Beer: You worked on a part-time basis for the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the CCRC, for four years; is that right?

Ian Henderson: Yes.

Mr Beer: You subsequently joined Second Sight Support Services Limited and Second Sight Investigations Limited; is that right?

Ian Henderson: Yes, it is.

Mr Beer: In broad terms, in the year 2020, what did those – sorry, 2012 – what did those companies do?

Ian Henderson: A variety of professional services. My appointment was as a contractor, consultant, and I was assisting Ron Warmington in the – in various, sort of, projects that the company was involved with.

Mr Beer: Was one of those projects the Horizon project for the Post Office?

Ian Henderson: Yes, it was.

Mr Beer: I think in 2012, you were a member of the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners –

Ian Henderson: That’s correct as well.

Mr Beer: – and a certified computer examiner?

Ian Henderson: Correct.

Mr Beer: As you tell us in your witness statement, they’re all listed in your witness statement, you have provided written and oral evidence in a large number of civil and criminal cases and regulatory cases as an expert witness?

Ian Henderson: Correct.


And not only that he was sat in the same room where the case file of Jo Hamilton and Seema Misra just happened to be available to him to peruse because the Post Office 'leaders' Vennells and Perkins wanted to show that nothing dodgy was going on???


Clearly when ANYBODY with half a brain reviewed Hamilton's case file and found the investigators statement it jumps out a mile that something was very wrong in even prosecuting someone when nothing is found to have been stolen...


Mr Beer: – and every page is marked in that way? So this is the original Security Department, Security Team report, with the purposes of the proposed prosecution of Ms Hamilton.

Can we look, please, at page 4, and the second paragraph from the bottom. This is in a part of the report that the Investigator, Mr Brander, is setting out the investigations that he conducted and the results of them. Can you see the second paragraph from the bottom, the second part of it:

“Having analysed the Horizon printouts and accounting documentation I was unable to find any evidence of theft or that the cash figures had been deliberately inflated.”

Now, you tell us had this was, in your statement, this was an important statement from the Investigator, agreed?

Ian Henderson: Correct

Mr Beer: Was it important to you because you knew that Ms Hamilton was, in fact, charged with theft?

Ian Henderson: Yes. I found it quite an astonishing statement in the context of what she was charged with.

Mr Beer: This was something that I think you spotted at the time?

Ian Henderson: Yes.

Mr Beer: Now, if we look at the top and the bottom of each page, and go back to page 1, and look at the front page and look at the foot of the front page, thank you, we can see that document, the report, is not marked as “Legally Privileged” or “Subject to legal professional privilege” or otherwise referred as to being a privileged document, correct?

Ian Henderson: That’s correct.

Mr Beer: We know that you subsequently referred to the contents of this report in your Case Review Report for Ms Hamilton?

Ian Henderson: Yes.

Mr Beer: Did you know that the purpose of these reports was to seek legal advice from the Criminal Law Team?

Ian Henderson: It’s a difficult question to answer. I mean, these were reports prepared by an experienced Post Office Investigator. In many cases, no further action was taken; in other cases, prosecutions were considered. So, in this particular case, I was not aware that this report was addressed – was prepared on the instructions of a lawyer or intended to be passed on to a lawyer.

Mr Beer: Did you feel inhibited in any way, in the circumstances it was given to you and in the light of any markings on it, in referring to the contents of it in your Case Review Report?

Ian Henderson: No, I didn’t.

Mr Beer: Can we see what you did with this important information, then, please. POL00063517. Is this a copy of your Case Review Report in the case of M035, Josephine Hamilton?

Ian Henderson: Yes, it is.

Mr Beer: We can see it’s dated 24 March 2015. If we just scroll through the first couple of pages, we can see there’s an introduction setting out the terms of reference. Scroll on, please. The documents you have been provided with – just stop there.

At the top of the page, one of the documents that you had been provided with was the Post Office Investigation Report. That’s what we’ve just looked at, correct?

Ian Henderson: Yes.

Mr Beer: If we can scroll forwards to page 6, please, and read paragraph 4.10.

“The documents submitted by the Post Office include a Post Office Investigator’s report, dated 17 May 2006 …”

That’s the Brander report we’ve just read, you’ve got the correct date.

Ian Henderson: Yes.

Mr Beer: “… (see Post Office Document 012) …”

That’s the right number because that’s the suffix of the document we’ve just looked at:

“… that includes the following statements:

“‘Having analysed the Horizon printouts and accounting documentation I was unable to find any evidence of theft or that cash figures had been deliberately inflated’.”

If we skip over two paragraphs, thank you, you say:

“In our opinion, the fact that the Post Office’s own Investigator had found no evidence of theft as well as the endemic User ID and password sharing in the branch … would have been relevant to the applicant’s defence. No more detailed investigation was carried out by Post Office until it was preparing its [Post Office Investigation Report].”

Then in 4.11:

“As described … below, we have not been provided with the complete legal files, which would enable us to investigate this matter in more detail. However, on the basis of the limited documents made available to us, we consider it to be possible (though it is clear to us that Post Office does not) that.

“a) the Prosecution realised that there may have been insufficient evidence to support a charge of Theft, but proceeded with it nonetheless;

“b) the offer by the prosecution to remove the charge of Theft may have been used to put pressure on the applicant to plead guilty to the False Accounting charges, even though the prosecution may have realised that a charge of Theft was likely to fail unless further evidence was … discovered to support that charge;

“c) the threat of proceeding with the charge of Theft may have been used to put pressure on the applicant to agree to repay the losses and to avoid the custodial sentence normally associated with a conviction for Theft;

“d) the purpose of proceeding with a charge of Theft may have been intended primarily to assist in the recovery of losses, rather than in the interests of Justice; and

“e) part of the agreement to remove the Theft charge included a demand that no mention would be made in court of alleged problems with the Horizon computer system.”

Now, there’s a wide range of conclusions reached there but are they founded, in part, on the inclusion in the Brander report of a recognition by him that there was no evidence to support a charge of theft?

Ian Henderson: Yes, they are.

Mr Beer: Was that very significant information for you, therefore?

Ian Henderson: Yes, it struck me that it was exculpatory evidence that had not been disclosed to Mrs Hamilton or her Legal Team.

Mr Beer: You were pointing it out to the Post Office in clear terms in this, your Case Review Report?

Ian Henderson: Yes



In simple terms the Post Office lawyers had been stitching up the sub-postmasters aided and abetted by Fujitsu staff who falsely testified to the courts - and the likes of Vennells and Perkins had no clue that this was happening why they continued defending the PO's position, namely that they knew of NOTHING wrong with Horizon (indeed they relied on Henderson's Second Sight report that there were NO SYSTEMIC ERRORS!!!) and there was no remote access to the sub-post offices.

It's worth following Henderson's testimony which goes on to say how Rodric Williams went on to attempt to cover up the above too!!!


As I've kept telling you Bob, the scandal is how the PO EXECTIVES went on to cover-up all knowledge of the shit they got themselves into once the Clarke advice (2013) hit the fan!!!

If the Minister for Postal Affairs was honest, ethical or just plain normal, he/she would not have looked for some justification for sitting on his/her hands whilst Post Office management spent a small fortune prosecuting hundreds of 'the little people' that it had employed as sub-postmasters.

"There's something not right here"
"What's going on?"
"Is it just the tip of the iceberg that we are seeing?"
"How many more are in the pipeline?"
"I want an independent report before this goes any further",

Would have been the normal reactions of normal people.

McFadden and Davey will be preparing their answers carefully, doubtless with the help of some fairly expensive advice. No prizes for guessing who will be paying for it

Did you not bother reading Henderson's testimony above then???

How the fuck did ANYONE know what was going on inside the Post Office Legal Department where rogue officers were acting in a way to recover what they believed were public funds that had been stolen by a FEW 'bad' sub-postmasters???

Sluffy wrote:There seems to be something like 950 wrongful prosecutions during the period of the 'unsafe' convictions from 1999 to 2015 (16 years) that averages out at to just under 60 cases per year.

There were approximately 11,500 sub-post offices.

So that equates to there being (on the face of it) an issue in 0.52% of the sub-post office branches and the remaining 99.48% of the branches working perfectly.

The way the system works is that the McFadden's in his position of Post Office Minister calls the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Post Office to account  and to answer to him, for the queries raised by the MP's that his office is receiving (In McFadden's day the Post Office would be under the Royal Mail and thus he would be calling the Royal Mail Chair and CEO to account).

They in turn would then demand an answer from their Executive Team who would present to them that Horizon is working perfectly in 99.48% of all the sub-post office branches...

Sluffy wrote:We finally note that in all 0f the 950 cases that were taken to court  only TWO were found to be not guilty (2 out of 950).  

The juries returned a guilty verdict on 948 of the 950 cases (99.8%)

We can see no issue here to be concerned about'.

This information would be the headline that the McFadden's (and the government) would be receiving.

In terms of individual cases the same process would apply but this time the answer to the Minister would come via the PO's Legal Office - and from those who were acting not as they should have been doing in the first place - such as Jarnail Singh and Rodric Williams et al.


The bottom line throughout this tale if you will, is that everything has revolved around the fact that no one challenged the advise and actions of the legal experts - everybody assumed they were acting properly and in good faith - why would you believe otherwise?

Even when the Post Office began to have doubts themselves - remember Ron Warmington's reaction when the Post Office employed the company that did their criminal prosecutions (Bond Dickinson) to review their own work ("they are marking their own homework!").

The crux of the issue is right here - Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - one might say Bob.

McFadden and Davey didn't "sit on their hands" they asked the right questions of the right people who in turn asked the right questions of their own people and were told Fujitsu testifies in court that there is no issue with Horizon and all shortfalls can only occur at the sub-post offices, and that is confirmed in criminal court where 99.8% of all prosecutions have led to a conviction - there isn't a problem.

No one knew (not even Evil Tony Blair) that SPM's were threatened with theft (when even the post office inspectors concluded there had not been a theft) but would accept an admission of false accounting (which technically they were doing by signing the weekly balances off, knowing the sums did not match with what Horizon said they owed) and thus accumulating a non existent debt over weeks and months and when they did admit to false accounting, it became and easy conviction for the PO at court.

It's not rocket science to understand what went wrong and why - it's clear that most Post Office staff did believe that Horizon was working fine (Ron Warmington even testifies to that from his findings himself at the Inquiry) and that any shortfalls must have been the responsibility of the SPM's and somebody came up with the clever (but wrong) way of getting SPM's to admit to false accounting rather than theft as a way to 'legally' recover the supposedly missing money at court.

They almost certainly to my mind thought they were acting in the public good by recovering 'lost' public money - rather than acting maliciously.

The maliciousness started when in became known in 2012/13 that unsafe prosecution's had taken place and the PO led by the lawyers attempted to cover it all up.

Unfortunately there seems to have been a succession of Postal Affairs Ministers who weren't quite as 'up to speed' as D I Grim.




My arse will be on the line and I don't want a cock up.

The "succession of Postal Affairs Ministers" did THEIR job properly - no matter what you may think.

That's what the Inquiry believes also to be the case also and that's why they only need appear before it for the minimum period of time required - half a day each.

They share one of the days with Moya Greene - former head of Royal Mail and the one who famously tweeted to Vennells that she didn't believe her not knowing about the cover-up at the PO.

‘I think you knew’ about Horizon errors, ex-Royal Mail boss told Paula Vennells

Texts appear to show that Dame Moya Greene believed former Post Office chief executive was aware of problems that led to scandal
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/22/ex-royal-mail-head-told-disgraced-paula-vennells-you-knew/


In case you missed it Bob, the key words there were the cover-up was AT THE POST OFFICE - the Postal Affairs Ministers were LIED TO and deliberately misled...


Ed Davey

Ed Davey attacks Post Office ‘conspiracy of lies’ as he defends role in scandal

Ed Davey has accused senior Post Office managers of unleashing a “conspiracy of lies” against successive ministers as he defended – and refused to apologise for – his role in the Horizon scandal.

“We were reassured time and again that the Horizon system was working. We were told there weren’t that many postmasters affected. We were just told so many lies,” he said.

“I deeply regret that I was lied to on such a scale … I hope they understand that I pushed really hard on the Post Office for answers and I got the same answers time and again. Other ministers did as well.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/08/ed-davey-accuses-post-office-of-conspiracy-of-lies-as-he-defends-role-in-scandal

Jo Swinson

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.

Could  Sluffy be Nuts' very own version of D I Grim?

Answers in not less than a thousand words please.

Sir Alan Bates declined to open Glastonbury but he has got another award. Hear what he has to say about who he thinks was responsible for the 'state sponsored corporate theft'.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366589670/UKtech50-winner-interview-Alan-Bates-Post-Office-Horizon-scandal-campaigner

What does Bates know? We all know Sluffy knows best, don't we chaps?

We know that one of us is completely bonkers.

I've told you what I suspect had happened 'gatekeepers' and the Inquiry seems to be heading to exactly that finding itself, by following all the vast amount of evidence that it has obtained in its role as it states itself to be...

Welcome to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry website

This is an independent public statutory Inquiry established to gather a clear account of the implementation and failings of the Horizon IT system at the Post Office over its lifetime.
https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/

You on the other hand have prejudged this from the start to be a massive, successive, multi-government, conspiratorial cover-up lasting over TWENTY YEARS and based on the Blair government pissing on your chips over something that happened at your local health authority over a quarter of a century ago.

I've produced countless links to support what I have been saying - many of them linked to the Inquires testimonies and findings so far, you on the other hand have produced noting, zero, zilch to substantiate your claims and revert to abuse and total silence when challenged to discuss or refute the avalanche of facts that I've put before you that completely undermines your opinion, rendering it at best just a wacky conspiracy theory and at worst the ravings of a bitter, sick and twisted mind resulting from your dealings at the time of the Blair government.

I'm utmost confident that the Inquiry will eventually report concluding that failures in the Royal Mail / Post Office legal teams led to the unsafe prosecutions of SPMs and when it came to light in 2012/13 that PO EXECUTIVES led by legal advice, attempted to pervert the course of justice by not disclosing potential miscarriages of justice.

I'm utterly and as equally confident that you already believe this Inquiry and its findings to be a whitewash and a further part of your twenty odd year old and continuing, multigovernmental cover-up, that presumably will never end?

If so you are a total and utter crank Bob.

Following a hunch I took a quick look at the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the Inquiry today. Unsurprisingly they say practically nothing about investigating the role of government in Sir Alan's  'state sponsored theft'. I don't say that was what the government intended but it seems that that was the result of government neglect over many years.


Some Post Office Ministers and civil servants are being called to give evidence but there is a strong possibility that enquiries made of them will be quite restricted or limited by the TOR. Its the usual way they do things when setting up Public Inquiries - determine in advance the areas they DONT want the Inquiry to go into.

It won't be long before we see what questions are asked and what answers are provided.

There you go again - it's all a massive governmental cover-up, all a giant conspiracy.

Fwiw the Terms of Reference state this...

...obtaining all available relevant evidence from Post Office Ltd, Fujitsu, BEIS* and UKGI to establish a clear account of 1) the implementation and failings of Horizon over its lifecycle...

Well if that is part of the TOR then the Inquiry has a duty to examine government files (BEIS) and the Civil Servants files (UKGI) in respect of Horizon from the very start ("over its lifecycle").

It isn't a secret that any new computer program system will have bugs in them but this doesn't explain the actions of PO and Fujitsu staff doing what they did - which clearly wasn't done under government instructions - and which CAUSED the scandal to develop.

What do you believe the Blair government (or any other since) are attempting to hide?

Yes the bugs caused the shortfalls, the belief was widespread that Horizon was generally working well (do you want me to dig out Don Warmington's statement on this stating exactly this to the Inquiry, again for you?), and so the shortfall (of public funds) had to be at the sub-post office end and the PO legal team hatched up a plan to get the SPM's to admit to false accounting then obtain a conviction against them (and get the perceived public funds back)!

This behaviour was unknown to EVERYONE not involved with it and could not possibly be the key plank in your government conspiracy to cover-up something they didn't even know was happening!!!

Yes the SPM's complained to their MP's who in turn, held the Royal Mail / Post Office to account and were told by the Chair and CEO that their executive officers inform them that there is no issue with Horizon, 99% of the branches have experienced no issues and of the few that have, 99.8% of them have been prosecuted successfully.

NO ONE believed there was a problem - so why do you think the government did from day one, had their hands all over it from the beginning and carried on to today and beyond into the future with this Inquiry being simply a continuing part of their cover-up???

What exactly do you believe was being covered up???

It can't have been the convictions because no one in government even knew they were unsafe - the civil servants didn't know they were unsafe - even the PO themselves didn't know they were unsafe until 2012/13 - and they did their damndest to cover it up ASAP and not let the government or the civil servants get to hear about it!!!

So what government cover up Bob?

What is it you think they've been hiding all this time???

       

Does the evidence given at Stage 2 of the Inquiry fit your serial governmental, twenty plus year cover-up conspiracy, or have you not bothered fact checking what evidence was given for yourself and just believed Nick Wallis view of everything (because that was what you wanted to hear!)???

I suspect the latter, seeing that you bought Wallis book that he wrote about all of this - from a negative government viewpoint.



I would post the relevant bits up from the inquiry but unfortunately the document format doesn't seem to allow me to do so but I suggest reading it from section 3, The role of government within the Horizon project and all the way through to the conclusion, noting in particular section 8, Failure of the NFSP to raise practical concerns in Horizon working group and section 10, Assurance given and the continuation of the roll out - which I suggest shows that both user issues and the roll out of the system were done on the understanding from the government that there were NO issues from the users during the trial period and it was Royal Mail Counters Ltd who gave assurances to the government to RESTART the roll out of Horizon - both points being completely contrary to what you've been banging on about for months now!!!

Closing statement on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-12/SUBS0000017%20Closing%20Submissions%20made%20on%20behalf%20of%20BEIS.pdf

Rats, web weavers and slippery word conjurors, they are all there in abundance in this malodorous saga.

TRACY IS SENT TO PRISON is the preceding chapter in Nick Wallis' book before his chapter on the uber-noxious NFSP.

Tracy Felstead was one of the earlier victims of the Post Office/Horizon monster, as described at th'Inquiry last week. It was April 2001 when Tracy was sacked by the Post Office over a Horizon 'created deficit' of £11.5K.

In the expectation of avoiding Tracy going to prison, Tracy's family paid off this 'discrepancy' but it made no difference. Tracy was jailed for six  months because she refused to confess to a non-existent theft.

This once bubbly young lady had been devastated by this false accusation, twice attempting suicide and battling mental health issues for the next 20 years before she was eventually exonerated at the Court of Appeal in 2020.

Tracy had been reduced to a wreck long before the likes of Vennells, Jenkins, Aujard, Parsons  etc etc etc set foot on the stage. What were TPTB doing all this time? Oh they were all very busy apparently. The BEIS statement, that Sluffy refers, to confirms it. Nowt to see there, old bean.

As I recall, the thrice married Alan Johnson was indeed very busy. You could hardly turn on the telly without witnessing smarm offensive, after smarm offensive. He was actually quite good at it. I expect he still is.

Well Bob, the BEIS statement is confirmed to be correct by no less than the NFSP.


Maybe you'd like to read what they submitted to the Inquiry which I link to below.

The 'Closing statement on behalf of National Federation of Sub-Postmasters' in which (if you cut through all the union trying to blame everything on everyone else but themselves, you will read that they CONFIRM they did not bring user issues to the governments attention (see Horizon Working Group, para 12) and that they didn't even think there was a real problem at all (see para 15) "that at the time it could not be determined at the time what was human error and what was system error" and continues "what the FSPM and others were seeing was not something that foreshadowed what was to become".

Para 16 continues this by stating "their organisational networks where issues about balancing were dealt with locally and would not generally come to 'head office'.  It is a question for the Inquiry as to whether the dots were capable of being joined by the UNIONS at this much earlier point..."

It continues further on to say "this was a slow burn not a big bang"  "I only get to hear what is fed to me" then carries on to say there are three types of SPBs, the ones in the union who report faults, the ones not in the union who they don't bother with (you'd think they would as a this stage all faults need to be found and reported so the system is as bug free as it can be going forward for the benefit of ALL SPMs whether in a union or not - Sluffy) and the ones who are in the union but are to embarrassed to report anything".

The para concludes "And so at this point 1999, it wasn't the real problem it is now" and ends with "With a network of thousands of post offices and sub-post offices, how possibly would it really be to join those particular dots?".

In para 21 the NFSP claim they were feeding everything back to the post office [NOTE NOT the government or civil servants - Sluffy] "was making its way back to those they did not have access to, for instance, ICL Pathway (later to become Fujitsu).  But it transpires this was not the case".



In short the union failed its members.

To be fair they did not imagine how all this would develop but the Horizon Working Group was specifically designed and set up to get the SPMs views and issues and the NFSP couldn't/didn't deliver its end because they simply didn't know what were system errors and what were user errors and didn't even believe there was any issue to mention at the time "this was a slow burn not a big bang".


Isn't this a completely different story to the one that you've been banging on about that the system was 'forced' upon SPM's knowing it was fit for purpose and the Blair government and every single one sine had been covering this up?

Clearly the Blair government DIDN'T KNOW there were any issues as the NFSP who were at the table to represent its members DIDN'T KNOW there were any either - we didn't know what were system errors or human errors, we only heard from one third of all SPM's, there was a 'slow burn' and not a 'big bang' so we didn't realise there was a problem, things were being reported locally so we couldn't join up the dots...

Once the system was rolled out (AT THE PO'S SPECIFIC REQUEST - remember - the government had halted the roll out to ensure all the problems known would be dealt with before it became a live nationwide system!) the government stepped back as was planned (as per the Closing statement on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) and the PO took over all material running of the system from then on!




Closing statement on behalf of National Federation of Sub-Postmasters

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-12/SUBS0000019%20Closing%20Submissions%20made%20on%20behalf%20of%20NFSP.pdf