ICYMI...Searchable transcripts of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry hearings
From which...some extracts of Phase 4 - 2 February 2024 - Closing statement by Mr Moloney:
- Jarnail Singh ascended to Head of Criminal Law, seemingly because he was the only one left, whilst simultaneously practising in a completely different area of law in his spare time.
- ...the evidence yesterday on the changes made Mr Jenkins’ statement in Noel Thomas’ case and the failings apparent in the evidence of Jarnail Singh and Warwick Tatford. They failed in respect of disclosure duties, including in the handling of third-party disclosure from Fujitsu and in the direct response to defence requests and, importantly, they have failed to exercise the independence expected of a legal professional in the exercise of the discharge of their duties to the court.
- Far from reprimanding Mr Singh for his emotive, gloating response to the conviction of a postmaster, the Executive Team were associated with the thanks offered by management to him for his efforts.
- Mr Singh wrote this:
“Any case begun now will attract some type of Horizon issue because this is the passing bandwagon people are jumping on. When we have a few more wins under our belt the Horizon challenges will melt away like midnight snow.”- ...the evidence of Elaine Cottam and Jarnail Singh call into question the Post Office’s and their lawyers’ understanding of basic concepts, such as how to answer questions in a witness statement and whether information that is not written down is disclosable.
- This also appeared to be the case for Mr Singh, who, despite being advised that Gareth Jenkins’ role as an expert witness had been discredited and that there were instances where the Post Office had breached their disclosure obligations, provided a quotation to the Post Office’s Public Affairs Manager, that it is submitted he knew must be untrue, to allow the Post Office to defend Horizon to the public.
He seemed equally unapologetic for his part in his role as Head of Criminal Law, or whatever the title may have been: Mr Singh seemed not to be able to remember. Instead, he compared himself as aggrieved, in the same way as victims of Horizon were, because he was in a position to do something and he didn’t. His evidence and that of Elaine Cottam was shocking in its incoherence and, whether deliberate or not, adds to the obfuscation created by so much of the witness evidence.
Does anyone actually believe this statement? Man is a removed from job and makes unsubstantiated claims about his former employer who as far as I can tell would suffer rather than benefit from what he's claiming. Can we believe anything that comes from the mouth of a Post Office Ltd executive?Originally Posted by blackal
Hmm? Henry Staunton or Kemi Badenoch, who would I choose to believe?
Ah KB, declined to discuss the Horizon scandal whilst meeting Fujitsu top boys at t' Davos, that KB, hmmm yes...
I would, he has nothing to loose, Sunak knew exactly what was going on when chancellor and did nothing,
It just gets worse and worse. Post Office management need to go to prison for this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68146054
And well done the BBC for their persistence.
So clever my foot fell off.
And those in Govt who serve the public, they abdicated their responsibilities, their duty of oversight...where was their sense of right and wrong...sense of responsibility to the Post masters...none, they were complicit.
Are the British people all asleep?^If it happened to Post masters, it can happen to any one of you , Fujitsu are balls deep in running- maintaining, almost every aspect of the state´s infrastructure...see also the poor buggers who used to live in Grenfell tower, the Windrush victims, covid victims courtesy of Brexit, dilly dallying decision making on lockdowns, and Scoff to cough for example, people with the right to remain in UK being hounded out by the Home orifice...
Last edited by Passenger; 20th February 2024 at 10:00.
My ex brother in law is deputy chief executive at the Post Office Owen Woodley, not seen him for a few years. I hope he's not caught up in all this?
Meanwhile...MPs demand to see ex-Post Office chair’s note.
Jail the lot of them, empty their bank accounts, immediately - Ministers involved, PO execs etc etc.......then let them fight for their innocence. That treatment seemed to be ok for the Post Masters.
I do so hope that it is found and supports his assertion. It may well date from when Grant Shapps was Secretary of State for Business, albeit that Kemi Badenoch thinks that it is all about her:
Notice she accused him under parliamentary privilege, coward, she needs to go
Amen brother...chuck them in a pit a couple at a time, they can fight for their innocence against a hungry polar bear.
I hope there is some review of the judicial system which allowed successful private prosecutions on the basis of flawed evidence. What went so wrong that this evidence was not adequately challenged such that hundreds of people were wrongly convicted.
Yes senior executives at the PO must be held to account, but something has to change in the court system to prevent this happening in future.
Its far more than losing money.
lives destroyed and thats no exaggeration.
Malicious,criminal behaviour they deserve jail time its ABH/GBH as far as I can see.
He's not holding back
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68357074
Oh dear...................
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-politics-live
Badenoch under pressure as ex-Post Office chair produces written memo to support claim that minister dismissed as lie
After the former Post Office chair, Henry Staunton, gave an interview at the weekend making various allegations about the government’s response to the Horizon scandal, including claiming that he was told by a senior official to delay compensation payments, Kemi Badenoch, the businesss secretary, hit back. Whereas politicians in these circumstances normally only contest the parts of the negative story they can confidently refute, Badenoch went nuclear, and more or less dismissed everything Staunton was saying as a complete pack of lies.
Today that is not looking like such a wise strategy. Henry Staunton has now found a copy of the contemporaneous note he made of his conversation with the person he described to the Sunday Times as a senior civil servant and he has shown it to the Times. The official was Sarah Munby, who at the time was permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the memo does a lot to substantiate Staunton’s original claim.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Guardian link
Staunton's meeting with Sarah Munby on 5 January 2023 does indeed predate Badenoch's appointment.
Why on earth were no official minutes taken at this meeting?
I would infer that it was just the two of them getting together as a civil servant from the government department and a newly appointed chairman. I don't suppose that they had an agenda for their discussion. It would not be unusual for the only record to be their own notes made during or after such a meeting.
Badenoch should have kept her mouth shut, maybe it's some sort of diversionary tactic
Kemi Badenoch v the Post Office: a symptom of chronic shallowness:
...The status of a cabinet pretender in some putative leadership contest is trivial compared to the plight of subpostmasters still awaiting adequate compensation. The content of discussions inside the business department may always be disputed. But it is reasonable to surmise that Ms Badenoch would not be in her present predicament if she had been as attentive to the Horizon case before it became a public scandal as she appears to have become afterwards.
In that respect, the episode is symptomatic of deeper malaise in a Conservative party that appears unable to distinguish between the shallow performance of government and the real thing.
Stunningly illustrates how the now seemingly ubiquitous ''fake it till you make it'' mantra can go horrifyingly wrong, it all comes crashing down, it's a sod though when it impacts a whole country.
I see KB's also been caught in another lie...The Canadians have written to rebut her claim of continuing discussions with them on trade deals including cheese! a claim IIRC she made to the commons end of January, her claim has no basis in fact...oh dear, pants on fire.
Last edited by Passenger; 22nd February 2024 at 11:16.
Two questions spring to mind re Sunak's recent comments in the house regarding payments to Postmasters....
He says it's the Tories No1 priority so....
1. Every time something is raised with him he says it's their No1 priority - does he have difficulty prioritising and scheduling things or does he just say these things off the top of his head?
2. If it really is now their No1 priority, why wasn't it before the ITV program? They've known about it for a very long time now!
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Just in case anyone should imagine any kind of progress has taken place within the PO:
Post Office said last month it stands by most Horizon convictions
Just to contextualise that statistically - since 1998 there have been roughly 16,000 - falling to 12,000 - Post Offices in the UK.
Over the same time period, 4,000 people were prosecuted using data from Horizon.
So that's a quarter to a third of all Post Masters cheerfully considered criminals by the PO, and successfully prosecuted!
Aside from politics, is there any other walk of life where criminality runs so rampant?
Or any other class of crime where there's been so ubiquitous a rate of prosecution?
Despite all we know, despite the utter insanity of all of this, these c**** STILL stand-by these wrongful prosecutions!?
I thought I was done being outraged over this topic - as usual, I was utterly wrong...
Because he is a liar
Re walks of life and such rampant criminality, realistically only the mafia/ organised crime communities.
FWIW I think to not be angry at HMG at this point the only way is you're just not paying attention.
GE now.
Last edited by Passenger; 23rd February 2024 at 10:00.
No.1 priority... power/wealth, interchangeable, just look around.
He was fully informed when he was the Chancellor, he did nothing,
Indeed. Do you recall the lead up and circumstances under which he attained/ accepted the Chancellors role...says all about who/ what he is.
Last edited by Passenger; 23rd February 2024 at 15:59.
Badenoch lied to the Commons when she said she met extensively with LBGT groups in her time as Minister. In fact, she met none. A serial liar.
That's if you take Ben Bradshaw's word as "fact", and if you think the word "engaged" means the exactly same as "met".
Ah, here's the truth of it:
"An ally of Ms Badenoch told the PA news agency: “As well as her meetings with Transgender Trend and Sex Matters, Kemi has exchanged multiple emails and letters with other LGBT groups.
This all counts as engagement and supports her tweet. But the truth is that Ben Bradshaw really just wants her to meet the likes of Stonewall and Mermaids, who support self-ID – something that Kemi does not support and is not Government policy.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...-b1140671.html
So in fact, she wasn't lying at all and Ben Bradshaw was trying to make political capital out of twisting the truth, again.
You'll believe anything the Tories put out. There's none so blind as them that close their eyes and refuse to see!
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
I assume that the Tory party fits in the organised crime communities sector?
You bet.
“Bringing the honours system into disrepute”
I didn’t think that was possible in the last 14 years
Michelle Mone? And others...
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
List of recently forfeited honours:
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...ce-august-2023
Forfeited honours - two immediately striking features from the list. First, the number of convicted criminals and second, does anyone know any of these people other than Vennels?
Dario Gradi was a footballer who became manager of Crew Alexandra. He was there in some capacity for 36 years. He was initially disbarred by the FA for not taking action against the manager at the time Barry Bennell who is now in prison for sexual offences at the club.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Yeah, badly worded - the tories have driven a bus through the honours system.
I think Thomas Hogg was in the DUP.
Strewth talk about a rogues gallery, rapers, sex offenders, crooks...what farce.
Mind you the bloke giving the honours, his bro!
Last edited by Passenger; 24th February 2024 at 10:54.
Staunton and Read among witnesses for update to MPs
- 11h00 Alan Bates
- 12h00 Nick Read
- 13h00 Henry Staunton
Edit: A very interesting session...ParliamentLiveTV
Last edited by PickleB; 27th February 2024 at 16:09.
Guardian opinion piece...Kemi Badenoch v the Post Office:
...The Post Office’s cooperation with the inquiry has been sporadic, at best. It failed to disclose (or disclose on time) more than 400,000 documents, and caused repeated delays. Lawyers representing the victims have accused it of using “malevolent” tactics to conceal the extent of its wrongdoing. Nick Read, the Post Office’s CEO, told the business and trade select committee he was “delivering great things for the Post Office”, but victims reported the opposite. Last year Read and other senior staff were paid bonuses for cooperating with the inquiry (Reid agreed to return his bonus after news of it became public). In January this year he wrote to the secretary of state for justice, saying that the Post Office would be “bound to oppose” overturning convictions of 369 out of the 900 victims of the scandal. This sounds like Staunton’s description of an institution that continues to insist on the guilt of the victims. Before the select committee, Read changed his tune, claiming that only “one or two” of the 900 are guilty.
Staunton has been right in his view that the government has no interest in dealing with the long-term issues. Before ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office pushed the scandal to the top of the political agenda in January, the current government devoted parliamentary time to it on just three occasions in two years. Meanwhile, ministers delayed exonerations by maintaining real terms cuts of 60% to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (the body which deals with wrongful convictions). Since Mr Bates, the government’s response has been largely performative. Its “exoneration bill” looks like decisive action, but it is really the opposite...
And ICYMI...Ex-Post Office chair gives new details of 'stitch up':
The former Post Office chair Henry Staunton has revived his claim that Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, and others have spread false claims about him to justify her decision to sack him in January.
In a letter to the Commons business committee, he gave his fullest account yet of the misconduct allegation about him that was used by Badenoch to part-justify her decision to dismiss him...
Business and Trade Committee report...Post Office and Horizon redress.
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