The Post Office Scandal

Ten Bobsworth wrote:NFSP crawls out from under its rock.


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

You missed my point - no doubt deliberately so.



The point was that the government had specifically set up a means by which the end users (the sub-postmasters) could feed directly into the top of the process as to any user problems they were encountering BEFORE Horizon was to be rolled out nationally.

The NFSP were the conduit by which SPMs could do this.

The SPMs DID report issues to it but the NFSP didn't pass them on - basically it seems because the didn't recognise there were really any (we don't know if it is a system error or a user error, we only hear from a third of the SPMs, it was all a slow burn and didn't recognise the problems - if it had been a big bang we would have, etc, etc).

Now fwiw I think there is some merit in them not recognising the problems that they developed into - but they could at least have been flagging up at the top table that there were issues that may or may not be system issues.

This resulted in the government NOT KNOWING there was anything that needed to be addressed with Horizon in advance of its role out.

And that in conjunction with the roll out the government would step back from managing the PO and allow it to manage itself as per the Postal Services Act 2000.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/26/contents

I refer you to para 10c of the Closing statement on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy where Alan Johnson "explained the (new) role of the government (in relation to the PO) in detail"


The government simply DID NOT KNOW of any issues with Horizon from those using the 'trial' system (the NFSP clearly didn't know of anything much either) and once the roll out took place the PO was left with almost total 'commercial freedom to run the business as they best thought fit, and the government stepped back to let it run in this way as legislated for in the Postal Services Act 2020.

Whether you face up to the truth or not, the government simply didn't know about any bugs that were not fixable prior to the roll out and did not know of unsafe prosecutions by the PO legal team (in conjunction with Fujitsu IT staff) thereafter.

The PO management themselves didn't know about it until the shit hit the fan with the Clarke advice in 2012/13.

There simple was no Blair government cover-up from 1998/99 or ever since until at the earliest 2012/13.

Christ how many more facts do you want me to rub your nose in until you can finally see what ACTUALLY happened and NOT WHAT YOU WANT TO BELIEVE HAD HAPPENED?

Poor old Sluffy. He's like Little Jack Horner. He pulls out a plum and doesn't realise its a raspberry.
Horizon had big problems and the guinea pig SPMs not only knew it they made it clear in no uncertain terms to the NFSP. The NFSP ignored it all.

Its hard to say whether the government was complicit with the NFSP in pretending that everything was ticketyboo when it was far from it but there seemed to be scant effort by government to make proper enquiries. Sultan of Spin, Peter Mandelson, in particular was keen to get on with it despite the reservations of others.

But it wasn't the fact that Horizon had unresolved issues. That was only to be expected. The problem was the government's apparent reliance on the NFSP/Post Office collaboration that allowed the Post Office to run amok destroying hundreds of lives in the process for ten years or more.

How many MPs questioned it? That question remains unanswered and might remain unanswered. What we do know is that those who did raise questions were routinely fobbed off before it eventually got to about 150 kicking off.

You just spout bollocks Bob, there's no facts to what you say.

Read the testimony and the factual documents produced at the Inquiry in the questioning of Alan Johnson by Jason Beer - it refutes totally what you say - the NFSP DIDN'T IGNORE ITS MEMBERS, the Government STOPPED the roll out to ensure that the system was dealing with the concerns of the sub-postmasters.  It's clear that there was NO COVER-UP GOING ON - EVERYBODY WANTED HORIZON TO SUCCEED.

Mr Beer: Going back to your witness statement, please, at page 6, paragraph 18, the question at 4c was:

“What do you recall of any concerns raised by the membership of the Horizon Working Group (or other key stakeholders) in relation to the robustness of Horizon and its technical integrity prior to rollout?”

You say:

“Rollout had already commenced when I took office. As it progressed, I recall concerns about training and quality of software being raised at a meeting of the NFSP’s National Executive Council.”

They are recorded in a report of the Council meeting held on 18 to 20 October 1999.

Can we go, please, to NFSP00000458. We can see that at the front page of the report – it’s 89 pages in length, and I’m not going to go through all of it. You can see from the front page it’s a report of the meeting of the Federation’s Executive Council held over three days at a nice hotel in the Malverns. You weren’t present at this meeting.

Alan Johnson: I don’t think so. I recall going to one NFSP meeting for a kind of flying visit.

Mr Beer: If we look at page 15 of the document, please. We can see a cast list and, so far as I can see from that and from the body of the document itself, it doesn’t appear that you were an invitee. There are couple of parts of the meeting record that I want to ask you about, please, because they reference you and things that you are said to have done.

Alan Johnson: Sure.

Mr Beer: Can we go to page 36, please, and then look at the bottom half of the page starting with “Mr Edmondson”:

“Mr Edmondson advised that the Minutes of the north east meeting … had been circulated. Some of the offices had been included in the trial. A questionnaire had been sent to all of these offices. At the end of the meeting the attendees were asked if they would like Horizon scrapped. Everyone agreed to stick with it but [I think that’s ‘halt’] and reintroduce it right. Complaints were received on balancing and training though some trainers were excellent. After having received training some subpostmasters did not feel competent do a balance. He explained that one subpostmaster ended up with a breakdown through the stress and pressure and many were very distressed. Mr Edmondson went on to say that we have got to back Horizon because we want it to happen …”

Was that, just pausing there at the moment, a commonly expressed view to you, by either or both of the unions, “We really need to back Horizon, in our long-term future safety”.

Alan Johnson: Yes, I can’t emphasise enough as how everyone saw that as the lifeboat in an industry where 200 post offices were closing every year. That had accelerated, and it looked like the only way to counter this was to allow this universal bank; the only way you could get a universal bank was if it was computerised.

Mr Beer: And the only way you could get computerisation was by getting Horizon working?

Alan Johnson: Yes. But the important point was, of course, you wanted to it to work properly and I don’t know of a computerisation project anywhere, let alone one on this scale – I doubt there’s been one on this scale with that, what, 4,000 counter positions in 19,000 post offices, all having to be linked in, it was a huge project. And so it wasn’t unusual for problems to occur but nobody wanted those problems to just be brushed to one side. We wanted them resolved, so that it could move ahead with the total support of the people who had to operate the system.

Mr Beer: Mr Edmondson said:

“We have got to back Horizon because we want it to happen …”

Then he said, or is reported to have said:

“… but asked are we being fair to subpostmasters. He felt that we have got to go back to the Post Office and get them to get things right before national rollout.”

Then:

“The General Secretary responded saying that the difficulties are known and there are number of issues. The modifications required are costing an additional £13 [million] and will be marketed as a success for the Federation. He went on to say that, in spite of the pressure Ian McCartney put on Dave Miller, Ian McCartney was of the view that Horizon had to make the deadlines. Alan Johnson has a different view. When Dave Miller asked him if he wanted Horizon to roll out he said no, not until it has been improved. Different training and software was essential. We [that’s the NFSP] can claim credit that the programme was brought forward to stop at 7 November.”

Then it continues. Do you recognise the exchange that attributed to you there?

Alan Johnson: Does that mean do I remember it? I don’t remember it, but that sounds right. I don’t think – I didn’t differ from Ian McCartney in the importance of the timescales and deadlines, but my view, and I think it would have been Ian’s view as well, was that we had to sort out the problems.

We had this opportunity of a Christmas kind of wind down. My understanding was that it was already going to stop, this kind of 300 offices a week, whatever it was. We were at very early stages here, this is October ‘99, so there would have been about 1,000 post offices out of 19,000/20,000, that were actually part of the group – part of Horizon.

There was going to be a stoppage at Christmas because of the pressure on post offices at Christmas.

Mr Beer: This document can come down now, so the Chairman can see you. Thank you.

Alan Johnson: Yeah.

Mr Beer: When the document is up the Chairman can’t see you.

Alan Johnson: Okay. So this was a perfect opportunity. I think the reference there to it being 7 November is they were going to stop at the end of November, but now, if they stopped early in November, they would have a complete two/three months before it got going again in January to sort out these problems. There was a natural pause there. And the natural pause was extended a bit, I think, by my intervention with Dave Miller but not by a tremendous amount. It gave enough time to resolve the issues.

Mr Beer: It records, this document, that you said that Horizon should not be rolled out until it had been improved, and those observations were made in the context of complaints having been made on balancing and training, that there were reports that the system was not user-friendly, and complicated to use, and that one subpostmaster had suffered a breakdown?

Can we just go back to your statement, please, paragraph 19, page 7. You were asked a question at 4d:

“Like all those who were concerned about the gradual erosion of the post office network, [you] saw computerisation as the only effective way to preserve existing transactions … Horizon was the vehicle for that computerisation [you’ve told us that already]. Nobody, so far as [you] knew, thought that maintaining the paper-based system of the Victorian era was going to serve the Post Office … in terms of specific issues once rollout had begun, I shared the concerns referred to in paragraph 18 above, with POCL, which prompted a pause to review the rollout in November 1999.”

Just stopping there, going back a page to paragraph 18, you’ve told us that you shared the concerns relating – mentioned in paragraph 18 with POCL and, in 18, you say at the end of the first line:

“… I recall concerns about training and quality of software …”

Go back to 19, please. In the middle of the page, about ten lines in:

“… I shared the concerns referred to in paragraph 18 above with POCL which prompted a pause to review the rollout in November 1999.”

raining and quality of software with POCL.

Alan Johnson: Yes.

Mr Beer: You continue:

“The rollout had been gradual, with only around 600 or the 19,000 post offices involved … As it said in the NFSP report, I did not want Horizon rolled out further until it had been improved.”

Then you give a reference, and that reference there is back to the minutes of the 89-page report of the NFSP meeting.

So just to understand what’s going on here, you’ve taken the reference to the pause in the rollout from the minute of a meeting that you weren’t at, which I don’t think you would have seen at the time, and used those as the basis for saying that you had been told about concerns over training and quality of software, you shared them with POCL, and that that prompted a pause to the rollout; is that right?

Does this really sound to anyone that the government was steamrolling anyone into having a crappy system or does it read that the concern was that there wasn't much point forcing a system that doesn't work on anybody, let alone the sub-postmasters?

What is being said here is the government has listened to the NFSP members concerns (so the NFSP was doing its job at the time at least), and instructed Post Office Counters Ltd to STOP the roll out until the SPM's concerns had been put right AND AT AN ADDITIONAL COST OF ANOTHER £13 MILLION!

Alan Johnson: Yes. I can’t remember doing it, so I am, as you rightly say, relying on the minutes of a meeting that I wasn’t at.

Mr Beer: Yes. I want to work out whether there was anything more formal that we ought to be seeing than that, like something in writing, where the unions raise an issue with you, ie reducing to writing what the problem is, with some specificity. Did that ever occur?

Alan Johnson: No, not so far as I remember. But, you know, there was the regular dialogue with – POCL were at the joint working party when these things were being raised as complaints, and the expectation was that would – that being relayed to them verbally, they’d get on and resolve it. There would perhaps have been a stage further down the route, where it would have to be put into writing and become more formal. But my understanding was that those issues were resolved and both sides, POCL and NFSP gave the thumbs up to rollout continuing.

Mr Beer: If the working group was maintaining oversight of that kind of process, was there ever an occasion when the issues raised were reduced to writing, were formally put from one side to the other, there was a written response, and then the working group judged the adequacy of it?

Alan Johnson: No, I can’t –

Mr Beer: It didn’t work like that?

Alan Johnson: I didn’t work like that, I can’t recall that. Basically if, things were raised with a Government minister and a Government minister said “This needs to be sorted out”, it was sorted out.

Mr Beer: You were satisfied, presumably, because at the next meeting nobody said, “Hold on, this is still a problem”?

Alan Johnson: Yeah.

Mr Beer: Can we turn to your witness statement, please, at paragraph 20 on page 7. You say:

“That said, I think everyone would have been amazed if there were no problems at all given the size and scale of if what was being implemented, especially in a world where digitisation was so new. The problems we were seeing reflected an expectation of what might happen with such a programme.”

You’ve given a piece of evidence this morning to similar effect.

Should the Inquiry take that to mean that the number, the nature, the level of issues being raised with you in these meetings were no more than teething issues or glitches that might be expected in the rollout of any such large scale project and nothing more than that.

Alan Johnson: Yes, I think so. I see here it was 600 offices out of, what, 19,500. That was – the whole point was to get these issues out early. So there were no alarm bells ringing that this might be a huge problem with this, certainly not that it ought to be replaced or that we were building up problems in the future, issues were raised, they were raised with the Post Office, they raised them with ICL, we got a thumbs-up that those were resolved, and rollout carried on.

Mr Beer: You were getting, as your main source of information here, your information from the unions; is that right?

Alan Johnson: The only way I could get it, I guess, unless, you know, I went round to sub post offices and talked to the subpostmasters themselves, yeah. It was – that’s why the joint working party was for crucial for NFSP, for us to listen to the NFSP than any other of the – with all due respect, the unions except – there were other forums for the other unions to make their views known.

Mr Beer: So if a red flag was to be raised or an alarm was to be pressed, it was for the NFSP to do so at these meetings?

Alan Johnson: Yes

Mr Beer: Was any consideration in the meetings given to what was happening to the subpostmasters on the ground in terms of balancing problems, given that they had a contractual obligation to make good shortfalls, and whether they should be given the benefit of the doubt when any shortfalls arose?

Alan Johnson: The issue never arose. I don’t remember that being raised at any Working Group meeting that I chaired.

Mr Beer: Were you aware, or was there any discussion, in the Working Groups that you chaired, about what should happen to subpostmasters in terms of investigation, suspension and prosecution of them, where Horizon showed a shortfall?

Alan Johnson: No.

Mr Beer: The Inquiry has received evidence from one subpostmistress, Pamela Lock, that she began to see shortfalls on the Horizon System in January 2000. She took some money from her own ISA to put money into the system – £5,000, I recollect – in order to make it balance, but the shortfalls continued. She has told the Chairman that she was phoning the helpline two to three times a week about the shortfalls. They provided no help, that in July 2000, auditors came to her branch and found a shortfall of £26,000. They asked her where the money had gone, and she said that it must be in the system, it must be the paperwork, because she didn’t have the £26,000.

But the auditors closed her branch, they took away the keys. She’d been a subpostmistress for 25 years. She was interviewed and then taken through the criminal justice system by the Post Office. Did you know that any of that was to going on –

Alan Johnson: No.

Mr Beer: – whilst the Horizon Working Group was meeting –

Alan Johnson: No.

Mr Beer: – and overseeing, and actively managing, the rollout of the system?

Alan Johnson: No.

Mr Beer: If you had known about the conduct of Post Office Counters Limited to Ms Lock or people like her, what would your view have been?

Alan Johnson: One of disgust.

Mr Beer: Why?

Alan Johnson: That she should be treated in that way. This was a new system so you’re saying this happened in July 2000?

Mr Beer: The first shortfall she noticed was in January 2000 –

Alan Johnson: January 2000, so –

Mr Beer: – and the auditors arrived in July 2000.

Alan Johnson: That’s crazy. It’s should have been something we knew about, if it’s connected, as it seems very much to be connected, with the software. That’s precisely what the Horizon Working Group was there to hear, those kind of issues. That, in particular, I mean, would have been – set alarm bells going with anyone remotely concerned with the trade union world and employment relations, and who, as I did, understood some of the kind of overreactions you sometimes got from what we used to call the Post Office Investigation Division.

Mr Beer: Why did you sometimes get overreactions from what was then called the Post Office Investigation Division?

Alan Johnson: I won’t bore you with the strikes I had to deal with. So when we worked on the sorting office floor, we worked under two-way mirrors, where we were watched all the time by people from the Investigation Department, and sometimes they would come and arrest people standing on the sorting office floor for all kinds of things.

One guy looked at a travel brochure that was going to a country that he was going on holiday to and, as he was standing at – what we used to call the packet frame, manually sorting this, he just for a second, took it out to looked at it, was arrested and taken to prison. He was a war hero, by the way. It happened in Preston: big national strike spread right across the north west.

So I wasn’t a stranger to the kind of strongarm tactics that were sometimes used by POID. Now Counters people were in a completely different situation, the subpostmistress that you described, it’s her livelihood, her home, probably. And, as I say at the beginning of my report, the reputation of the Post Office was largely there because of subpostmasters and subpostmistresses being valued in their community. So the effect this would have had, this would have set all kinds of alarm bells going.


Mr Beer: Against the background that you describe, was any thought given by the Working Group to what shall we do in the interim? We’ve got these problems being reported to us with the system. There’s not only an imperative to solve them but we need to look after our people whilst those problems are solved, and that they’re not, for example, hauled over the coals, not criminally investigated when there might be a different explanation for the shortfalls.

Alan Johnson: I would have thought that would have been specifically outlawed during a period when people were getting used to the new system. That wasn’t – right, so the point that you raised, the issues you raised about that subpostmistress, didn’t come up at any meetings, didn’t come up at the NFSP conference, which was in May of that year. Nobody came to me with that. Nobody put the kind of red flag up that should have been put up about what happened to that woman, because it was obviously a precursor of what was to come.

Mr Beer: I should say that 20 years later, Ms Lock did have her conviction overturned.

Alan Johnson: Well, that’s good..

Does it really sound that the government was fucking over the SPM's from the very start and covering everything up for the next 20 years???

Why would the government want to fuck the sub-postmasters in the first place???

What do they gain from doing that???

Where is the governments motive to have a crappy Post Office system and prosecute hundreds of sub-postmasters in order to hide the fact the system was shit THEN attempt to cover everything up for the next TWENTY YEARS???

Your conspiracy theory is just utterly bizarre and totally bonkers - isn't it???



You really do need to get your bumps felt.

Horizon - Weapon of mass prosecution?


I understand why Flora Page described Horizon as a Frankenstein-like monster put together by humans.

I wouldn't agree entirely. It wasn't that. It was plainly a new and complex IT system that, not unexpectedly, had flaws but mostly worked OK. It was the governments failure to ensure that its flaws were not abused or weaponised to destroy the lives of hundreds of innocent people.

The governments claims that they 'didn't know the gun was loaded' is tosh and feeble. Ministers too busy and couldn't cope? Do me a favour, it won't wash or at least it shouldn't. They had set all this in motion and it was their job to ensure that the weapon wasn't misused or abused as it plainly was over and over and over again

It is the job of an MP to be aware of what is going on in their constituencies and, when necessary, make government aware. Take Clwyd West for example; one of hundreds of constituencies affected.

Did Alan Bates take his campaign to Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Clwyd West until 2005? It would be surprising if he didn't but if he did what did Thomas do about it? Will we ever find out? We should; I hope we will but I wouldn't put money on it.

Goodness me, Bob is beginning to understand the truth at long last!!!

Ten Bobsworth wrote:Horizon - It was plainly a new and complex IT system that, not unexpectedly, had flaws but mostly worked OK.

Horizon worked far better than ok actually, as per Second Sight's, Ian Henderson (an expert in these things) testimony to the Inquiry!

Bob Bob is still in denial about the government and the Postal Service Act 2000, and the setting up of a 'regulatory' body - the Postal Services Committee.

The penny may eventually drop with Bob that the aim (and actuality of what happened) was to allow the Post Office to run the business as it saw fit, rather than the government need to micro manage it.

The bottom line which I think Bob is finally getting to understand is that it was (shall we say) overzealous legal and investigative post office staff - with the knowing / or unknowing(?) aid of Fujitsu IT experts, that erroneously and manipulatively prosecuted SPMs for shortfalls that they had not caused - and were completely innocent of.

Yes there became a growing concern and unrest but what exactly was it that was wrong?

The system was showing that money was missing.

The INDEPENDANT expert witnesses testified that the short fall could only be caused from the SPM's branch.

The PO's legal officers convinced the SPM's to admit to false accounting and in return they would drop the theft charge - and the SPM's HAD signed weekly false accounts assuming the system would correct itself at some later date.

The judge and jury had a signed confession of guilt...

...so why did people feel there was something wrong?

But of course there was!

The Clarke advice of 2012/13 spelt out what it was - the expert witnesses were not telling the WHOLE TRUTH.

The scandal is about why this was covered up and not admitted to - and by whom - my money is on the 'gatekeepers'.

The government couldn't possibly know the PO legal staff and inspectors were acting how they were - how could the government possibly know that???

So clearly there can't have been NO GOVERNMENT COVER UP BEFORE 2012 at the earliest.

It really isn't rocket science to see and understand that the Blair/Brown government which left office in 2010 couldn't possibly have been part of anything that only came to light nearly three years later.

What exactly were they supposedly covering up?

What was their motive?

Bob simply refuses to answer.

He won't answer now either - just you watch!

Go on Bob - I dare you!

Weapons of mass destruction


‘Micro manage’ my arse. Sluffy is wilfully re-gurgitating spin with all its diversionary intent.


The Freedom of Information Act provided the ammo that the Daily Telegraph needed to show that MPs were micro-managing their expenses claims and quite imaginative some of them proved to be.

But it was Horizon that provided the ammo for the Post Office to start sacking and prosecuting sub-postmasters on the basis of unreliable and unsubstantiated evidence and it seems that they couldn’t wait to start using it. There was, consequently, lots more lucrative legal work for Post Office lawyers but what other reasons were there? Who were the real organ grinders?

Protecting the public purse?

Alan Johnson MP (and/or his sidekick, Ann Keen MP) apparently couldn't see anything wrong in the chairman of our local Primary Care Trust secretly drawing £700K (from another 'related' local NHS Trust) whilst Tracy Felstead was prosecuted and imprisoned over £11.5K that she never took.

Julie Wolstenholme in Cleveleys fought back and Post Office paid her c. £180k in compo and bought her silence.

(Sir) Alan Bates also fought back. He spent more than 20 years fighting back and its going to cost the taxpayer a fortune to settle the rightful claims of the hundreds of SPMs whose lives were destroyed by the neglect (to say the least) of the Post Office, civil servants and government.

So how many MPs sounded the alarm?  A hundred and fifty or so eventually but what about the start of it when it all started kicking off and it was evident that there was ‘summat not reet’.

Alan Bates wrote to the North Wales Mail about it all in 2003. His MP, Gareth Thomas (Labour) was a barrister and must have known about it, so what did he do? Something or nothing?

We need to know. Vennells, Jenkins, Parsons etc etc must bear their share of their responsibility but they should not be the scapegoats and the only ones paying the price. The weapon of mass destruction of lives, that Horizon was turned into, had been used for years before any of them entered stage right (or left).

Your motive is that the PO EXTERNAL LAWYERS - who the PO had to PAY were making a lot of money from the prosecutions???

What sort of a motive is that for the government of Tony Blair to start a TWENTY YEAR cover-up to hide that fact???

That's just complete bullshit from you.

I ask again WHAT WAS IT THAT THE COVERNMENT WAS HIDING, WHAT MOTIVE DID THEY HAVE TO HIDE IT, AND HOW DID IT BENEFIT THE GOVERNMENT?

It was unsafe prosecutions - the government didn't know about them until 2012 at the earliest.

Why would they want to protect EXTERNAL barristers from getting rich by fucking SPM's?

Would benefit did the government get from the SPMs getting fucked?

Your ramblings above about the expenses scandal your local health authority scandal are totally irrelevant.

Why just because Bates MP was a barrister 'must he have known what was going on at the PO - did ALL the barristers in the country know that - Simon Clarke who was one of the barristers being richly paid by the PO didn't know that until he discovered the truth in 2012 THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER Horizon was introduced.

What you say simply makes no sense whatsoever.

There was no cover-up from the start, there was nothing to cover-up because no one knew false INDEPENDENT EXPERT WITNESS testimony was being relied on in court.

Were MPs, civil servants and ministers all as thick as pigshit? I don't think so.

Its unlikely that they would all be fully aware of all the sordid details at every juncture but there were enough warning signs from an early date to alert most of them that there was 'summat not reet'.


There's only one Sluffy, thank heavens, but there is another Gareth Thomas. He was Labour (Co-op) MP for Harrow West from 1997 until the recent dissolution and he was asking questions in Parliament in 2023. A bit late but better late than never.

Its the other one that interests me, Gareth Thomas Labour MP for Clwyd West until 2005. What questions did he ask about the theft by the Post Office of his constituent's (Alan Bates) sub-post office at Craig-y-Don?

Alice Perkins successor as Chair of POL is on today. He is isn't making a good impression at Bobsworth Towers. I cant think he's making a good impression at Aldwych House either.

No MP's, civil servants and ministers aren't as thick as pig shit and neither are they mind readers.

The courts had prosecuted SPM mostly on their OWN confessions of FALSE ACCOUNTING.

Tell me Bob how the MP's, civil servants and Ministers KNEW otherwise that these SELF CONFESSED people to a CRIMINAL act, were actually innocent?



How did it benefit the government to frame and lock up sub-postmasters?



What was the governments motive for doing so?



How would the government even KNOW that the prosecutions were unsafe?




Yes as I've said above there was a felling of something wasn't right but what was it???

Sluffy wrote:Yes there became a growing concern and unrest but what exactly was it that was wrong?

The system was showing that money was missing.

The INDEPENDANT expert witnesses testified that the short fall could only be caused from the SPM's branch.

The PO's legal officers convinced the SPM's to admit to false accounting and in return they would drop the theft charge - and the SPM's HAD signed weekly false accounts assuming the system would correct itself at some later date.

The judge and jury had a signed confession of guilt...

...so why did people feel there was something wrong?

But of course there was!

The Clarke advice of 2012/13 spelt out what it was - the expert witnesses were not telling the WHOLE TRUTH.

The scandal is about why this was covered up and not admitted to - and by whom - my money is on the 'gatekeepers'.

The government couldn't possibly know the PO legal staff and inspectors were acting how they were - how could the government possibly know that???

So clearly there can't have been NO GOVERNMENT COVER UP BEFORE 2012 at the earliest.

It really isn't rocket science to see and understand that the Blair/Brown government which left office in 2010 couldn't possibly have been part of anything that only came to light nearly three years later.

What exactly were they supposedly covering up?

What was their motive?

Bob simply refuses to answer.

He won't answer now either - just you watch!

Go on Bob - I dare you!

See I told everyone you wouldn't answer - you never do.

You never do because IT NEVER HAPPENED - The Blair government, the MPs, the civil servants and ministers DIDN'T KNOW the prosecutions were unsafe until at the earliest 2012 and THE scandal is about the covering-up from that point on, of that knowledge of these unsafe prosecutions and not disclosing them as they should have!!!


You just based your make-believe conspiracy theory on your hatred of the Blair government resulting from something that happen in your local health authority twenty-five years ago.

You've got issues Bob.

No proof.

Just personal, irrational, issues, that you just won't let go of and which have turned you very, very bitter, angry and irrational over the years since.

I'll be interested to get Nick Wallis' opinion on Tim Parker's contribution to yesterday's proceedings but it seemed to me that, as a first-class asshole, Parker must have seemed ideally suited to succeed Mrs Straw as Chairman of the Post Office.

In the meantime we'll have to make do with the Grauniad. In the Grauniad's lexicon of Newspeak the SPMs are 'operatives'. Where's that come from?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/03/ex-post-office-chair-expresses-sincere-regret-over-horizon-scandal

Nick's report is in but if you haven't got a spare 12 minutes to read it, 'asshole' would seem to sum up Tim Parker well enough.

Parker was right about one thing though; most of the shithouse was constructed between 2000 and 2010. The problem was the ones in charge. They were building a shithouse but pretended it was a chateau.

Post Office Chairman Tim Parker: Fatalistic Attraction

Nick Wallis
Thu 4 July 2024
16 comments
12 min read

Tim Parker – Post Office Chairman 2015 – 2022
The morning started on a light note. After Tim Parker had been sworn in, Jason Beer KC, who was asking questions on behalf of the Inquiry, took him to paragraph 268 of his 136 page witness statement.
Beer told the Inquiry that Parker had written about the Post Office appointing “a criminal with extensive experience to work alongside Brian Altman QC”. Beer wondered if perhaps the work “silk” was missing?
Parker agreed it was.
So, suggested Beer, “rather than the Post Office appointing a criminal, the Post Office would appoint a criminal silk?”
“Correct”, said Parker.
Glad that was tidied up.
Parker’s motivations for taking the job of Post Office chair were not properly explored. He told the inquiry he knew he was walking into a business “in deep crisis” and he showed some caution before agreeing to do so – requesting a good look at the Post Office’s figures. But Parker never took a salary (or, more accurately, he donated his salary to charity) which begs the question – why would a busy, important, incredibly rich man without a knighthood agree to take on this government-owned basket case for no money?
Parker’s due diligence only went so far. He had no idea his predecessor, Alice Perkins (and the business department and the Post Office board) thought Paula Vennells was a bit useless. In terms of his handover with Perkins, he told the Inquiry “I met Alice for lunch before I began.”
Parker has no recollection of any formal handover. Just a lunch.
Jason Beer KC

Grooming the new chair

We were then taken to the briefing given to Parker on his arrival at the Post Office. It was drafted by Mark Davies, the Post Office’s director of communications. The initial draft of the document aimed to tell Parker that:
“thorough investigation has underlined that the [Horizon] system is efficient and robust.”
“We have also asked our external criminal lawyers to review all the cases involving prosecutions.”
“Throughout all this no evidence has emerged to support the very serious allegations being made”
“we only prosecute where there is clear evidence of wrongdoing… We do not prosecute people for making mistakes.”
“Some… complainants have now asked the Criminal Cases Review Commission to examine their cases… we are co-operating fully with this process and providing all information.”
“No information at all has been destroyed, as has been alleged.”
All of the above statements are untrue:

• there had not been a thorough investigation of the Horizon system,
  
• the criminal lawyers had not reviewed all prosecutions,
  
• independent investigators Second Sight and Detica NetReveal and Deloitte had all found evidence supporting the serious allegations being made by the JFSA,
  
• the Post Office was not co-operating fully with the CCRC and had not provided all information (eg the Clarke Advice),
  
• information had been destroyed (a point we were told was picked up by Andy Parsons from WBD before the document went to Parker)
  

Andy Parsons’ comment on Mark Davies’ document
The briefing was eventually sent to Parker by his chief executive Paula Vennells, who claimed to be its author.
Tim Parker’s defence of his failings as Post Office Chair can be summarised this:

• it was a complex business with a lot going on. Potential miscarriages was only a part of what heI had to deal with, and,
  
• had he known how many prosecutions and sackings there had been at the start, his response could have been different
  
• resolving the intractable issues raised by Subpostmasters could only be done in a court of law – Bates v Post Office was therefore a benevolent happenstance
  
• it was all Jane MacLeod’s fault
  

Quite Strong Language

Parker’s plans for helping Paula Vennells make the Post Office more commercially-minded were derailed by a letter he received from the Business Department shortly after he was appointed. Parker was told by Baroness Neville-Rolfe, the Post Office minister, that he needed to investigate the Horizon system and see whether or not there had been any miscarriages of justice. Neville-Rolfe told him:

“I am… requesting that, on assuming your role as Chair, you give this matter your earliest attention and, if you determine that any further action is necessary, will take steps to ensure that happens.”

Within a week of getting his feet under the desk, Parker appointed Jonathan Swift QC to write a report. You can read the Swift Review here. It’s not great, but it does suggest a lot of things at the Post Office have gone seriously wrong. Professor Richard Moorhead has written ten blog posts about its failings (start here). Parker, increasingly coming across as a semi-detached chair called the Swift Review “relatively reassuring”, telling the Inquiry: “it wasn’t a bad piece of work and it yielded some good recommendations”.
In his report Swift raises an essential point about the Post Office’s bait and switch prosecution tactic – going after Subpostmasters with unevidenced theft charges in order to secure a guilty plea of false accounting. As Swift has it, the Post Office “effectively bullied Subpostmasters into pleading guilty to offences by unjustifiably overloading the charge sheet”. Swift was unequivocal that this was “a stain on the character of the business.”
Beer said: “That’s quite strong language, isn’t it?”
“Quite strong, yeah”, replied Parker.
Jo Hamilton (centre) and her legal team

Secret Swift

Parker chose not to share the Swift Review with the Post Office board. He says this was because he was told not to by Jane MacLeod, the Post Office’s general counsel (the title given to a company’s top in-house lawyer). This apparently came down to Parker’s failure to understand privilege. Parker says he couldn’t do anything with the document because it was privileged.
Beer took him to this, noting “the report on its face is not marked as privileged is it??
“No, no”, said Parker.
“And the report does not say that it’s been provided for the purpose of… any ongoing litigation?”
“It doesn’t”, agreed Parker.
“It doesn’t say that it was provided for the purposes of obtaining legal advice, does it?” asked Beer.
“No”, said Parker, who (like most of us) had no idea what privilege is and the forms it can take.
It turns out Parker didn’t even give the Swift Review to Baroness Neville-Rolfe, his boss and the person who commissioned it. For this and his failure to give the report to the Post Office board, he was later censured by Sarah Munby, a senior official in the Business department. Parker said he was just following McLeod’s legal advice.
When it came to the group litigation Parker also followed legal advice. He suggested that Bates v Post Office was not a failure, but somehow a natural consequence of the intractable problems the Post Office was faced with. Or as Parker said today: “it remains my view to today that once the litigation had started, and although I think we’ll see it wasn’t necessarily handled in the best and cooperative manner, the litigation… ultimately proved to be a comprehensive… settlement of a lot of very complex issues.”

Always the lawyers

Teju Adedayo and her barrister Ed Henry KC
Parker went on some after this, circling his point that essentially the courts were the best place to resolve the issues Alan Bates and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance had been raising. Beer waited until Parker had stopped speaking, then he asked: “Are you saying by that answer that it needed a group of brave and determined Subpostmasters to hold the Post Office to account by bringing in the Post Office before a court? And that the Post Office was incapable of doing it itself?”
It seems that was exactly what Parker was suggesting. He told Beer:

“with hindsight… the postmasters… Sir Alan Bates should never have been required to mount a group litigation order. I understand that… all I’m saying is that once it was in train, had it been managed a bit better, then a lot of complex issues might have been determined without the delay and without the cost. But a judge review of all these issues, I still think, one way or another, was the right way to get, you know, an outcome in the end, yes.”

Towards the end of the day, by Ed Henry KC asked whether he was being “fatalistic” about the scandal “and that more could have been done to strive to see the other side, and to strive for settlement without having to enter into the quagmire of litigation?”
Parker replied: “Yeah, I mean, there’s no satisfactory answer to this.”
Over the course of the day we were reminded that Tim Parker took on the job as Post Office chair by agreeing to give the company 1.5 days of his time a week. He then successfully managed to reduce that to 2 days a month. Just the man to run an organisation which he described in “deep crisis” at the time he joined, with “an awful lot going on… and an awful lot of stuff that needs addressing.” Challenged on this, Parker said:
“being a Chair is about a number of different things and it certainly is about time spent in a business but it’s also about the capacity to understand business problems and the capacity to strike up effective relationships with the key people in a business, especially the CEO…. what happened here was the result of me not spending enough time at the Post Office, and I would certainly rebut that suggestion. I would say that I was a very active, energetic chair who took a lot of time and spent time with people to understand the business.”
The only way that logic could makes sense was if Parker’s reign was an unqualified success. As it was, he took the business from crisis into catastrophic failure, to the point that were it any ordinary organisation, it would be dissolved.
Parker’s shoulder-shrugging about the inevitability of litigation might have held more weight were it not for the fact that once the judge (Mr Justice Fraser) had begun to find in favour of the Subpostmasters, the Post Office threw the kitchen sink at trying to get him recused.
Parker says when Jane McLeod suggested the Post Office attempt a recusal application, he was “a little bit uneasy… it’s big deal to get a judge to accept that they had made a judgment that was wrong on technical grounds”. Nonetheless, the Post Office went to the finest lawyers money could buy – Lords Grabiner and Neuberger.
According to Parker, Grabiner “said something along the lines that we had a duty almost to ask for the judge’s recusal….The way the advice was framed was that.. almost… the law required us, where we thought something had been incorrectly managed for whatever reason, we needed to act upon it.”
Grabiner’s claim that the Post Office had a “duty” to apply for recusal was described by Grabiner as nothing more than his personal emphasis, nothing to do with a legal duty. Beer asked Parker: “Can you recall whether you formed a view as in what sense you were under a duty to make the application?”
Parker replied: “I don’t want to make too much of this duty thing. I think we just got advice from two very, very senior lawyers and felt on balance that advice should be taken.”

Swift exit

(l-r) Sam Stein KC, Chris Jacobs and David Enright
The Swift report seems to have been strangled at birth by Jane MacLeod. She allegedly told Parker he could not release it to the Post Office board and then connived to ensure that the minister, Baroness Neville Rolfe, never got to see a copy. In fact – it was such a sensitive document it wasn’t initially digitised. According to Parker, under McLeod’s instruction, the review was held in paper copy only by four people at the Post Office – MacLeod, Rodric Williams, Patrick Bourke and Mark Underwood.
Swift made eight recommendations including a proper review of the Horizon IT system. He also recommended every single Post Office prosecution should be investigated. Parker tasked MacLeod with implementing the Swift review. She, Williams and Bourke soon found an excuse to avoid doing so. When the Bates v Post Office litigation came around, Williams wrote of the need to create “a piece of advice that says TP [Tim Parker] should stop any further work”. Williams continued “I’m conscious that this feels somewhat unpleasant in that we are being asked to provide political cover for TP. However, putting aside the political background, shutting down TP’s review is, in my view, still the right thing to do.”
Patrick Bourke wrote: “the litigation makes the Review irrelevant since the issues to be considered will be put to a higher standard of testing in the Courts; to continue would be fruitless since we couldn’t use its output, senseless in terms of expenditure, and present unnecessary risk to the organisation’s legal position.”
Between them, they got their way. And what of Parker, the semi-absent, part-time chair?
“When you get to see these emails… which are what’s going on behind the scenes,” he said, “it kind of puts a different complexion on things”.
Jane MacLeod has refused to be questioned by the Inquiry.

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16 responses to “Post Office Chairman Tim Parker: Fatalistic Attraction”

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Lizzie
July 4, 2024 at 10:13 am
Good morning all.
I watched most of Parker’s performance open-mouthed yesterday. Yes, he did the right thing in commissioning the Swift Report, but for someone with his experience to be bowled out by serial liars is quite unbelievable. In danger of sounding like the boss in The Life And Death of Reggie Perrin – he didn’t get to where he was without knowing a shyster when he saw one.
This, more than anything, summed up the ingrained attitude of the GC and her sidekicks:
“I’m conscious that this feels somewhat unpleasant in that we are being asked to provide political cover for TP. However, putting aside the political background, shutting down TP’s review is, in my view, still the right thing to do.”
How was that ‘political cover’ for TP? It is highly likely it was political cover for Post Office apparatchiks – how so, you might ask? He’d been there five minutes, they’d had years to finagle, to cover their backsides, and here comes this candy-floss haired meddler with a massive spanner to gum up the works. No wonder Jane McLeod is refusing to speak to the Inquiry, by the sound of it she may be more concerned about accusations of perverting the course of justice.
What a shower.
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Tim Shapcott
July 4, 2024 at 10:08 am
Parker was there to get a gong only….
in fact out of his depth at this level and clearly inexperienced in applying judgment and qualifying advice in legal matters.
never understood the technical issues and didnt want to look either.
Basically a complete wet….and again delayed the truth…
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Elizabeth Moyse
July 4, 2024 at 10:04 am
I was at the inquiry yesterday – this account summarizes it very well indeed. I felt it was unfortunate that Ed Henry left his question about Teju Adedayo until he was running out of time, particularly as she was sitting next to him…it enabled Parker to shrug it off. A propos of how little time Parker actually spent at the Post Office, it is rather odd that many of the emails from him we were shown came from his National Trust email – did he not have a Post Office one? And I would be very interested to know what he was paid for being Chair – he may have given it to charity – I bet it wasn’t one that would help wrongly convicted subpostmasters! The day before yesterday, I was at my local post office and asked the postmistress if they had been affected by the scandal. She told me that at one point they had had 5 or 6 heavies behind the counter going through stuff – but hadn’t complained because her husband preferred to put it behind them. I wonder how many more like them there are…
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G Kelly
July 4, 2024 at 9:37 am
A strutting peacock who believes that the magnificence of his bonce is proof enough of his extraordinary abilities. He doubtless has never considered self reflection necessary but often indulges in his mirror reflection.
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Rosie Brocklehurst
July 4, 2024 at 9:34 am
There is an understandable tendency to think ‘conspiracy of knaves’ in this awful saga and maybe I am wrong. But in an article in 2022 in the Mail, they claim Parker donated his salary of £75000 for 1.5 days a week to charity ‘in recent years’. I am thinking he did not donate it until he needed to look good perhaps after his errors on the Swift review, but he stuck it out rather than resign to do sort out getting a new CEO in place . Nick Read was, unusually, at the Inquiry yesterday? Parkers’ salary reduced to £19,000 when he went down to half a day a week from 2020. As an aside, I thought only 8 cases were recommended for review in the Swift advice ..and the point was no question was asked by Parker as to how many there really were and that only came to the surface well after 2015. It seems extraordinary to me that this P/T chair never asked how many prosecutions there had been when real estimates of much larger figures -hundreds of cases, were being established by Nick in the Inside Out programmes and the Panorama in 2015, the very year Parker came in. Why did he want the job? This was a man who had a history of sacking thousands, of selling off companies he ‘turned around’ and making millions from these sales – (he had £75 million in 2008 and by 2018 recorded as having £273 million by the Times Rich List built up between 2008 and 2015). He had flirted with Boris Johnson and London politics, becoming Boris’s Deputy London Mayor in 2008 but called himself a socialist turned Capitalist. He certainly had no grip on POL, obviously believes some SPMRs who have been acquitted are guilty but won’t say so, and curves round the question of why appalling people like Rodric Williams are still at POL – on the grounds that you wouldn’t be able to do anything if you got rid of people.
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Alan Cornforth
July 4, 2024 at 9:22 am
It was about 20 minutes (or so) into Tim Parker’s evidence that I suddenly realised that he reminded me of the late great University Challenge presenter Bamber Gascoigne and then, within a minute of this revelation, I heard JB quote from an induction document for TP that started with “this should give him a starter for ten” !!
That was where the comparison ended, however, as he didn’t answer many questions!
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Big Chris
July 4, 2024 at 9:13 am
Man in a Suitcase*
Back in the late 60’s this British TV series about McGill, an ex CIA man turned private detective, was very much about betrayal, mistrust and deceit. He travelled everywhere, hence man in a suitcase.
Tim Parker was the part time POL sleuth and Chair who held down so many roles that he must have found it difficult managing his smalls let alone his briefs. The man in a Samsonite suitcase.
The man who helped to end national trust in the Post Office brand. A man who hired expensive lawyers like Kwik-Fit fitters. By the end of his tenure, the Post Office vehicle he had been carelessly driving ended up being suitable only for sale by a dodgy second hand salesman. Ironic as by this time he tried to cut his work at POL down to a half a Daily.
Phew! Jobs, jobs, jobs! as my grandson said after receiving homework during his first week at school.
You can feel their pain.
Parker did have British Pathe news to run after all, plus the National Trust and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. The former Kenwood Chef man a blender of justice. Parker in his wide ranging roles always comfortable in his own shoes. A Superman once seen in Clarks, Kent.
Taking over at POL the man labelled the ‘Prince of Darkness’ when he cut 10,000 jobs at the AA thought he could help develop the commercial skills of the Rev Paula Vennells in cutting costs. The Prince of Darkness schooling the Daughter of Darkness in the dark arts?
Unfortunately our man in a Samsonite didn’t realise his super powers would be useless in an organisation full of kryptonite. Lurking in the underworld were corporate psychopaths, lawyers undergoing disclosure aversion therapy and the Horizon system, full of errors and so badly coded that even McGill’s CIA would struggle to decipher it.
Like our 1960’s hero McGill, Parker found himself in a situation full of unscrupulous characters prepared to use any means to achieve their ends.
But that is where the comparison ends. Parker was too smart and too detached to be the fall guy. The cynic may question his amnesia and by the end of the questioning you could see the mask of co-operation with the inquiry slipping.
Rather than appearing bored like Perkins, he appeared like a schoolchild just before the final bell goes. Wrapping up his lanyard and shutting his file while answering the last question. He oozed self satisfaction and lack of contrition or empathy.
Despite appearing surly and moody, McGill did feel compassion for those who were the victims in his cases, and would try to help them, often at his own cost.
On the other hand, Parker, the Prince of Darkness appeared content that the outcome of Bates v the Post Office had resolved the issues.
He had somehow helped to achieve that end result despite POL throwing £millions of taxpayers money at a rearguard action by the Kwik-Fit lawyers to thwart justice. Parker was the Kenwood chef blender of justice and the skint little people only narrowly missed being pulp in the POL fiction.
At the end of the inquiry, the former deputy major of London and CEO of the Greater London Council bid us farewell.
Whether the former Chairman of Transport for London used the tube or not I don’t know. The man in the suitcase with a degree in philosophy disappeared up his own logic. Puff! He was gone! The ultimate salesman who made it big. Like his former boss Boris Johnson only with better hair.
Listening to Parker reminded me of the words of another great salesman, Arthur Daley…
Have I not suffered enough? Have I not endured endless sleepless nights of concern? If you prick me, do I not spill claret?
* As Parker is a trustee of the Royal Academy of Music (jobs, jobs, jobs, phew!) he might be interested to know that the theme to Man in a Suitcase by John Barry was used by Chris Evans as the introductory music to TFI Friday.
This is not to be confused with Man in a Suitcase from the album Zenyatta Mondatta.
That is by the Police who are of course not to be confused with the Met Police who are investigating the scandal.
Let’s hope POL face the music.
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Dusty dog
July 4, 2024 at 8:59 am
And the Devil casts his net.Yet again Roderick Williams and Jane McLeod have perverted the course of Justice. The Police and Solicitors Regulatory Authority need to thoroughly investigate the heinous part these two played in this catastrophe. Mr Henry KC was spot on when he said Williams was at the centre of the web!
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Shaun Taylor
July 4, 2024 at 8:40 am
He came across certainly as someone who would make a good Chairman for the National Trust which he was, but the Post Office? my god the other candidates can’t have been up to much.
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Helen Hatton
July 4, 2024 at 8:28 am
Most of Tim Parker’s E mails in to Post Office shown by the enquiry were written from his other “ day job” positions . E mails were signed off from National Trust and Samsonite whenever he corresponded with staff at the post office. So although he was a part time ad hoc chairman of the post office, 2 days a month at one time ,he was working on other companies time when away from the post office. Surely not the “right” thing to be doing? Wonder what Samsonite and National Trust think to this behaviour.
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Mark O’meara
July 4, 2024 at 8:05 am
Tim Parker seems to have been a very part-time Chair of POL, having many other ‘top jobs’ at the same time. He tried to set his Horizon failures in the context of his having been inundated with many other POL challenges, to which Mr Beer pointed out that ‘context’ also included the fact that TP had asked for his hourly commitment per month to POL to be reduced. He didn’t like that.
He cast doubt on Jane McLeod’s claim (in her witness statement) that she had offered the Swift Report to any Board member ‘on request’. TP said that he could not recall her making this offer in any Board meeting. Is the Inquiry really unable to get JMcL to answer questions now? She could do so without leaving NZ, of course.
TP used a sloppy way of talking – with many instances of “kind of”, “yeah”, “you know”, “er”, “um” and “mmmm”. This, along with his evident desire to justify and excuse himself, meant that many of his answers to Mr Beer’s questions were rambling and very vague indeed. Perhaps that was the intention. Mr Beer picked him up on his use of language at one point, telling TP that ‘words are important’ (or a phrase along those lines).
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Bob Lawson
July 4, 2024 at 7:52 am
“requesting a good at the Post Office’s figures.”
Perhaps “requesting a good (look?) at the Post Office’s figures.”
Very funny under the circumstances…
The inquiry consists of long periods of tedium interspersed with too few moments (such as that one) of levity… Which is understandable.
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   Nick Wallis
   July 4, 2024 at 10:23 am
   oops thanks – will fix
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Sarah
July 4, 2024 at 7:31 am
TP has hit the highest spot on my league table of evil Post Office creeps. He’d “toyed” with the idea of making an apology in his opening statement. He worked hard throughout the morning to make Jason Beer KC his ‘chum’. Every answer relating to the SPMs was evasive, cold-hearted, constantly minimising the living hell they endured, and continue to suffer as they listen to these ‘entitled’ business leaders (!) explain away their part in this scandal. TP lied and lied and lied …
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Graham Thorpe
July 4, 2024 at 7:28 am
So he’s yet another one who tries to get away with giving a sort of commentary on the events while acting as if he was not an important part of them himself. They’ve all done it in their turn.
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Patty Solomon
July 4, 2024 at 3:34 am
Still don’t understand what “robust” is supposed to mean in the context of the Horizon system. The word is used repeatedly but it is not a term used in the context of computer systems or software or programming.
I am writing from Australia as a retired Professor of Statistics so please let me know if this has been covered already.
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I might have been a bit ungenerous in describing Tim Parker as an asshole. When Oxbridge turns out assholes they aren't just ordinary assholes, they are usually Premier League assholes.

Let me get this straight Bob?

The government TOLD Parker that his first job was get to the bottom of what was going on in the post office - yes?

Putting aside why the government (who in your world was actively covering up something that they knew about) even though no one knew it was happening from at least 1999 until 2013 - The Clarke advise - wanted to have a report telling them what you claimed they already knew about from 'this' from the very beginning and Parker DID commission one right away - that's good isn't it?

The report was written then HID from the government, the post office board, in fact nearly EVERYONE APART FROM THE PO LEGAL TEAM.

Would that not suggest the government, and the PO Board were in real life, kept in the dark by PO Executive Officers led by the legal team?

Doesn't the directly contradicts your bonkers conspiracy theory and is basically word for word what I told you I suspected to have happened months and months ago on this very thread??



I think it certainly does you know....

Yes Bob, all of them are corrupt politicians deliberately covering up something that you can't even define or explain why they might want to be doing so!


Could it be that perhaps YOU are the looney who has long since lost his grip on reality?


I ask yet  again,

What exactly do you believe they are covering up?

and

What motive do they have to do so?

None of them ever noticed anything wrong because there was nowt wrong.

It stands to reason, doesn't it? Sub-postmasters must have all been scammers stealing money from pensioners just like the judge said in the Tracy Felstead case.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:None of them ever noticed anything wrong because there was nowt wrong.

It stands to reason, doesn't it? Sub-postmasters must have all been scammers stealing money from pensioners just like the judge said in the Tracy Felstead case.

They were charged by the PO 'police' on the evidence of Fujitsu that there was no remote access to Horizon and that the system had no bugs in it that could have caused the shortfall and therefore theft had been committed.

The evidence from the PO was presented to the sub-postmasters and many of them accepted a lesser charge of 'false accounting' which perhaps naively did to 'move things on for another week and hopefully things would correct themselves'.

They never did of course but every week they signed to 'hide' the continuing shortfalls the more the accrued total increased.

At criminal court before twelve of their peer and having signed a confession to false accounting it doesn't take long for them to be convicted.

What's hard to understand why SPM's were being jailed?


Say you are an MP at that time and one of your constitutions comes to ask for your help, what do you do?

Well maybe you get one of your assistants to do a bit of digging and they come back and tell you the 'experts' say there's nothing wrong with the system, the shortfall can only arise at the SPMs end and they have signed a confession to false accounting - what view would you take - the word of the SPM that can prove nothing, or statements from experts that the system is sound and here's copies of the SPM's signed confession to false accounting.

I think you may try to avoid your constituent in future because everything is suggesting that they are as guilty as Hell.

Now scale that up to the government point of view, your MP's are telling you something isn't right, so what do you do?

Well maybe you'd enquire of the PO as to is there some form of an issue here and you are told NO.

Maybe you have too many MP's knocking on your door to accept just that, so you tell the PO you want PROOF that's everything is alright.

You get the PO to appoint independent specialists to examine what is going on (Second Sight).

That doesn't end well so you get the PO to employ someone to get to the bottom of what is going on (the Swift Report) but that is kept away from the eyes of the government (and even the PO Board by the PO legal top brass).

You then call them in to answer scrutiny questions from MP's (and it's a pack of lies - but you don't know that at the time).


HOW THE FUCK DOES THE GOVERNMENT KNOW THAT THE PO ENFORCEMENT INSPECTORS WITH INCOMPETANT CRIMINAL LAW PO PROCUCTORS TOGETHER WITH FALSE TESTOMONY FROM THE FUJITSU 'INDEPANDANT' EXPERT WITNESSES HAVE CAUSED ALL THIS MESS???

They clearly believed the prosecutions were just normal day to day stuff in the beginning, as time went on and more cases were brought to MP's attention then what would they find - prosecutions based on independent expert witness testimony, often with an accompanying admission of false accounting - what is there to think the prosecutions were unsafe.

Eventually the government directed PO to appoint independent experts to look into what was going on (2010), when that ran into a brick wall the government ordered the PO to get to the bottom of things - the Swift Report (2013) they didn't even get to see the report!!!

They called PO's bosses in for questioning (2015) and were told lies and eventually it all came out with Bates v The Post Office which started in 2017.


There was NO COVER-UP Bob, no matter how badly you wanted it to be.

The FACTS have proven you WRONG.

Time, and time, and time, and time again.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:None of them ever noticed anything wrong because there was nowt wrong.

It stands to reason, doesn't it? Sub-postmasters must have all been scammers stealing money from pensioners just like the judge said in the Tracy Felstead case.

They were charged by the PO 'police' on the evidence of Fujitsu that there was no remote access to Horizon and that the system had no bugs in it that could have caused the shortfall and therefore theft had been committed.

The evidence from the PO was presented to the sub-postmasters and many of them accepted a lesser charge of 'false accounting' which perhaps many naively did do to 'move things on for another week in the hope that things would correct themselves'.

They never did of course but every week they signed off to 'hide' the continuing shortfalls the more the accrued total increased to.

Unfortunately at criminal court, before twelve of their peers and having signed a confession to false accounting, it doesn't take long for them to be convicted.

So what's hard to understand why SPM's were being jailed?

Let's move on.

Say you are an MP at that time and one of the SPM is your constituent and comes to ask for your help, what do you do?

Well maybe you get one of your assistants to do a bit of digging and they come back and tell you the 'experts' say there's nothing wrong with their computer  system, the shortfalls can only arise at the SPMs end and they have signed a confession to false accounting - what view would you take - the word of the SPM that can prove nothing, or statements from experts that the system is sound and here's copies of the SPM's signed confession to false accounting.

I think you may try to avoid your constituent in future because everything is suggesting that they really are as guilty as Hell.

Now scale that up to the government point of view, your MP's are telling you something isn't right, so what do you do?  

Well maybe you'd inquire of the PO as to is there some form of an issue here and you are told NO.

They...

Sluffy wrote:tell you the 'experts' say there's nothing wrong with the system, the shortfall can only arise at the SPMs end and they have signed confessions to false accounting from the guilty sub-postmasters themselves - what view would you take - the word of the MP that can prove nothing, or statements from experts that the system is sound and here's copies of the SPM's signed confession to false accounting.

I think you may try to avoid your MP's protestations in future because everything is suggesting that their constituents really, are as guilty as Hell.

After the years role by maybe you start to have too many MP's knocking on your door to accept just that, so you tell the PO you want PROOF that's everything is alright.

You get the PO to appoint independent specialists to examine what is going on (Second Sight).

That doesn't end well so you get the PO to employ someone to get to the bottom of what is going on (the Swift Report) but that is kept away from the eyes of the government (and even the PO Board by the PO legal top brass).

You then call them in to answer scrutiny questions from MP's (and it's a pack of lies - but you don't know that at the time).


SO HOW THE FUCK DOES THE GOVERNMENT KNOW THAT THE PO ENFORCEMENT INSPECTORS WITH INCOMPETANT CRIMINAL LAW PO PROCUCTORS TOGETHER WITH FALSE TESTOMONY FROM THE FUJITSU 'INDEPANDANT' EXPERT WITNESSES HAVE CAUSED ALL THIS MESS???

THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW.

SO THERE SIMPLY CAN'T HAVE BEEN A COVER-UP FROM THE START.

They clearly believed the prosecutions were just normal day to day stuff in the beginning, as time went on and more cases were brought to MP's attention then what would they find - well nothing more than prosecutions based on independent expert witness testimony, often with an accompanying admission of false accounting - what is there to think the prosecutions were unsafe?

NOTHING.  

Eventually the government directed PO to appoint independent experts to look into what was going on (2010), when that ran into a brick wall the government ordered the PO to get to the bottom of things - the Swift Report (2013) they (the government) didn't even get to see the report!!!

They called PO's bosses into Parliament for questioning (2015) and were told lies.

Eventually it all came out with Bates v The Post Office which started in 2017.


There was NO COVER-UP Bob, no matter how badly you wanted it to be.

The FACTS have proven you WRONG.

Time, and time, and time, and time again.

“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you will be like him yourself.” Proverbs 26:4

Poor old Sluffy.

After the memorable one-day performance of alpaca-headed asshole, Tim Parker, th'Inquiry reverts to its usual format next week with a parade of civil servants and we should get an opportunity to consider whether they were just plain stupid and easily fooled or summat else. My money's on summat else.