The Post Office Scandal

I must confess that I was unfamiliar with the phrase 'up the wazoo' before noticing it on The Post Office Scandal blog this morning. I have led a sheltered life but did catch the drift.

'Disclosure violations up the wazoo here – some pieces of the jigsaw are still missing but there’s about three days of Andrew Parsons and Jarnail Singh to come', wrote Tristam Price.



https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/martin-smith-and-the-instruction-to-shred/#comments



Yesterday's witness, Martin Smith, is having to come back again this morning. I wonder if there will be more fireworks when counsel for  the SPMs get their chance to question the former Cartwright King lawyer.


The Scandal Roadshow events keep selling out fast.  They are putting one on in Hayes on Sunday. A great opportunity for Sluffy to go along and explain his hypothesis. According to Sluffy, the Inquiry will be  wasting time and money interviewing Ministers or board members as they all knew nowt about what was going on. The gatekeepers would have made sure of that, in Sluffyland.

As expected, we had to wait to the end of yesterday's proceedings before the fireworks were set off.
.
https://www.postofficescandal.uk/blog/

If enough time has been set aside, much of the same is likely today as the parade of low-life lawyers continues with another appearance of the inimitable Jarnail Singh.

Oh dear, Jarnail Singh! What can you say?
There was a classic Singh email to Susan Crichton referred to today. In it Singh wrote:

'It may send a green light for defendants to get hold of their member of parliament and result in copulation'

I don't know how Jason Beer KC kept a straight face but there might have been a few MPs who wouldn't have been averse to that idea.

Ten minutes of yesterday's witness, Ms Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe) would be ten minutes too much of anybody's time. Yet another wretch without a scruple in her body, it seemed. Where did they find them all?

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/belinda-cortes-martin-crowe-sir-humphrey-would-be-proud/#comments

Project Sparrow? The Post Office tried to claim that the word 'Sparrow' was privileged.

Was this somebody's evil joke of giving 'crumbs' to the SPMs  whose lives were  destroyed by POL's dodgy prosecutions?

Seems to me that this woman was a career Civil Servant who took early retirement and as many did back then, set themselves up as a consultant to do basically the same job that they had been doing at a commercial rate, being three, four or even more times that they were were being paid as salary they were on previously.

You have two choices as a consultant, one is to always be truthful in your reports to those who have commissioned you, the second is to tell those who commissioned you 'what they want to hear'.

The difference between the two is basically is if you want future work and a good reference or you put your honesty and integrity first and not the money.

Seems this woman took the first option (and maybe if the Companies House record is her company which I suspect it is) decided that selling out her morals wasn't really for her after all?

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07627384/filing-history


And for contrast I refer you to Second Site who did put honestly and integrity first in their independent review - and got sacked for doing so!


For the record and despite your constant demeaning of me (Sluffy-world, which I apparently inhabit), Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe) testimony has moved the timeframe of the inquiry into Alan Bates territory and clearly the government of the day still had no idea of the scandal, which I've held from the beginning only becoming known to them around the time of the High Court case.

I await with interest the testimony of the various Ministers and Civil Servants still to appear before the Inquiry but it is appearing that Sluffy-world might yet be reality and your version of government events to be self opinionated bollocks.

The comments were written days after Mrs Cortes-Martin became the Post Office’s Programme Director for Project Sparrow, a role which included acting as the “main channel of communication” between the chairman of a working group dealing with complaints made by sub-postmasters and the Post Office itself.

Project Sparrow was the codename for a sub-committee which dealt with the Post Office’s communications with parties including Second Sight, MPs representing unhappy sub-postmasters and campaigner Alan Bates’s Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/07/post-office-director-discussed-fettering-horizon-it-inquiry/


It seems that whilst the Working Group may have thought of Cortes-Martin as, at most, a neutral party, she was, in fact a conduit of information from the Working Group (WG) back to the Project Sparrow gang (Bond Dickinson’s Andy Parsons*, Vennells, Chris Aujard, Rodric Williams, Mark Davies and Angela van den Bogerd).


*Womble Bond Dickinson told Post Office to hide incriminating evidence -

Womble Bond Dickinson acted for the Post Office for much of the relevant time and is understood to have pulled in enormous fees of £37.5m between 2013 and 2023 for its tainted work.

https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/womble-bond-dickinson-told-post-office-hide-incriminating-evidence#:~:text=Womble%20Bond%20Dickinson%20acted%20for,email%20sent%20by%20Amy%20Prime.

Rollonfriday

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

'Selling out her morals wasn't really for her', Sluffy? What morals were they?

This morning's evidence suggests that folk with morals was the last thing TPTB at POL were looking for to dig them out of the hole they were in.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:'Selling out her morals wasn't really for her', Sluffy? What morals were they?

This morning's evidence suggests that folk with morals was the last thing TPTB at POL were looking for to dig them out of the hole they were in.

I don't know what her morals were (DO YOU? or do you just THINK you do?) but I suggest she found life as a consultant greatly different than what she thought it would be after her top job in the Civil Service and that's why seemingly she packed it in after her relatively short stint at the Post Office.

I don't doubt she could have been a 'lifer' there along with Vennells, van den Bogerd and Williams if she really had no morals at all.

This is how one commenter on the Post Office Scandal Blog described yesterday's tedious proceedings:

'Thanks Nick (Wallis) for highlighting the important bits. I sat through the whole boring event but she cast a spell over me. As you say she’s one of the intelligent ones. She clearly knew very well that she was part of a cover up and was happy to be involved.


Why wasn’t she asking why so many journalists and MP’s were querying Horizon. Given her civil service career she should have been all too clear about dodgy IT systems. Or is the career path of a senior civil servant based on covering things up?


It’s plain to see that the Establishment has basically destroyed much ethical practice in the professions and public service. That probably happened a good 20 years ago to be fair. And it’s likely to get worse.'


https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/belinda-cortes-martin-crowe-sir-humphrey-would-be-proud/


You needn't have sat through all of it, Frances. You could figure out in minutes what Ms Crowe was.



Nick Wallis reckons that this case has had the hands of the political establishment all over it from the start. Nick's been a big part of exposing all this and I reckon he nailed it.

Why would I be interested in some random person's opinion???

Anyone can have an opinion, doesn't mean that it is correct though - everybody had an opinion of Ken Anderson (apart from you and I) and they were wrong - we KNEW differently because we knew the facts about Company Law.

You seem to hold an opinion that the hands of the political establishment was all over the scandal from the start - well where is your evidence of such?

I don't see it in anything you have posted in respect of Belinda Cortes-Martin today, are you perhaps confused about Wallis subtitle to his article (the bit about Sir Humphrey would be proud?).

If so it relates to BC-M's past career in the Civil Service where she held the position of Information Director for the Ministry of Justice.

She LEFT the Civil Service to work for POL - so wasn't reporting to the government or any Minister - so how would her doing whatever she did provide any information of the scandal to the government for them to have their 'hands all over it'???

Are you perhaps believing she WAS still a Civil Servant working to the government when she was with the POL?

And I can't comment on what Wallis believes - maybe you would be so kind enough to link me to articles where he has evidence that the government of the day knew there was a scandal going on and ignored the fact.

As far as I understand to date the government was kept in the dark for as long as it possibly could have been by POL and only really understood what had happened when the shit hit the fan with the High Court case.

I would have though you above anyone else would want to see the FACTS before jumping to conclusions which you clearly have done - namely WHEN did the government become aware of the scandal - they clearly had no knowledge of it by the 3rd February 2015 at the earliest - when Vennells reported to the Parliaments Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and avoided saying anything to do with Horizon issues (and by that time BC-M had already left her role with POL).

So exactly how was the government to know when Vennells, van den Bogerd and Rodrick Williams et al, were stopping it going above their paygrades???



For completeness...

On 22 March 2017, Senior Master Fontaine made a group litigation order with the approval of the President of the Queen's Bench of the High Court and, on 31 March, the then Mr Justice Fraser was nominated managing judge in Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd,[93][94] brought by 555 claimants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#Bates_&_Others_v_Post_Office_Ltd

So if the government didn't know by February 2015 and Bates v the Post Office started in March 2017, then I suggest that what I've been saying all along is nearer to the facts of the matter than your opinion that the political establishment had their hands all over it from the very start.

I don't know and never have claimed to know all the facts about Ken Anderson or the Post Office, Sluffy. But I do know some of the key facts about both and usually have a fairly good idea when folk don't have their thinking heads on.

I knew in 2000/2001 that there was summat seriously wrong in't Post Office and that it couldn't possibly have happened by accident or oversight. It had to have come from the top and the top was the political establishment as it had been in the serious NHS malpractice that I uncovered a few years later.

It seems that TPTB decided that they could limit enquiries by Second Sight to post 1 January 2010 and that one way or another they could otherwise control all of Second Sights work. To their great credit, Second Sight weren't playing ball.

The Inquiry does not yet seemed to have focused much on the political influences on the scandal and Pat McFadden seems to be the only politico from 'the root-growing  period' called to give evidence. 

None of have appeared yet. Lets see what they have to say for themselves when they do. Expect the strongest questioning to come from representatives of the stitched-up SPMs.

'The inquiry saw evidence that Post Office lawyers were interested in hiring Mr Altman because of his political connections and because he "had the ear" of the Attorney General’s office'.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cld0rewpy01o





It seems that this 'top lawyer' didn't understand what he was getting into.

He does now. Agendas without principles, scruples or morals.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:I don't know and never have claimed to know all the facts about Ken Anderson or the Post Office, Sluffy. But I do know some of the key facts about both and usually have a fairly good idea when folk don't have their thinking heads on.

I knew in 2000/2001 that there was summat seriously wrong in't Post Office and that it couldn't possibly have happened by accident or oversight. It had to have come from the top and the top was the political establishment as it had been in the serious NHS malpractice that I uncovered a few years later.

It seems that TPTB decided that they could limit enquiries by Second Sight to post 1 January 2010 and that one way or another they could otherwise control all of Second Sights work. To their great credit, Second Sight weren't playing ball.

The Inquiry does not yet seemed to have focused much on the political influences on the scandal and Pat McFadden seems to be the only politico from 'the root-growing  period' called to give evidence. 

None of have appeared yet. Lets see what they have to say for themselves when they do. Expect the strongest questioning to come from representatives of the stitched-up SPMs.

Oh hello, someone seems to be backtracking here, don't you Bob!

Would you like me to post some quotes from you from this very thread about 'political hands all over this from the start' seems you've now down graded that to something a lot more 'vaguer' to the TPTB (the powers that be) - so who exactly are those - are we now only talking about those 'inside' the Post Office?

Well if we are here's testimony from Susan Crichton, legal and compliance director for the Post Office to the Board in January 2012...

11:18 23 Apr
'What did integrity in Horizon mean?'
We're looking at minutes from a board meeting on 12 January 2012, which Susan Crichton attended.

At this point, she was legal and compliance director for the Post Office.

A civil litigation report was shown to the board. One member asked for an assurance that there was no substance to claims brought by sub-postmasters that had featured in Private Eye at the time.

At the meeting, Crichton assured the board that Horizon had been subject to an internal audit.

Inquiry counsel Julian Blake asks what Crichton what she understood, at this stage, integrity in Horizon to mean.

"Reliability and probity, I guess," she says.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-68875828/page/6

So, if not the politicians any more, then are the Board members of the Post Office the ones you are referring to as 'The Powers That Be' because in 2012 they were being told by their own Head of Legal and Compliance that the Horizon system was reliable, honest and true!!!

So if no longer politicians and not at Board level then who are these Power That Be?

Do you mean Vennells, van den Bogerd, etc...

...you know the 'gatekeepers' that feed (or don't feed) the information up the chain of command for The Powers That Be to base their decisions on.

And once again good for you knowing something was wrong almost TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO, please tell the class what actions you did about this???

Write to the Post Office, contact your MP, inform the press, contact TPTB even?

What?

You did absolutely nothing..?




Had you lost your thinking head perhaps?

(Did you ever find it again?).

Sluffy wrote:

Oh hello, someone seems to be backtracking here, don't you Bob!

Would you like me to post some quotes from you from this very thread about 'political hands all over this from the start' seems you've now down graded that to something a lot more 'vaguer' to the TPTB (the powers that be) - so who exactly are those - are we now only talking about those 'inside' the Post Office?

Well if we are here's testimony from Susan Crichton, legal and compliance director for the Post Office to the Board in January 2012...

11:18 23 Apr
'What did integrity in Horizon mean?'
We're looking at minutes from a board meeting on 12 January 2012, which Susan Crichton attended.

At this point, she was legal and compliance director for the Post Office.

A civil litigation report was shown to the board. One member asked for an assurance that there was no substance to claims brought by sub-postmasters that had featured in Private Eye at the time.

At the meeting, Crichton assured the board that Horizon had been subject to an internal audit.

Inquiry counsel Julian Blake asks what Crichton what she understood, at this stage, integrity in Horizon to mean.

"Reliability and probity, I guess," she says.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-68875828/page/6

So, if not the politicians any more, then are the Board members of the Post Office the ones you are referring to as 'The Powers That Be' because in 2012 they were being told by their own Head of Legal and Compliance that the Horizon system was reliable, honest and true!!!

So if no longer politicians and not at Board level then who are these Power That Be?

Do you mean Vennells, van den Bogerd, etc...

...you know the 'gatekeepers' that feed (or don't feed) the information up the chain of command for The Powers That Be to base their decisions on.

And once again good for you knowing something was wrong almost TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO, please tell the class what actions you did about this???

Write to the Post Office, contact your MP, inform the press, contact TPTB even?

What?

You did absolutely nothing..?




Had you lost your thinking head perhaps?

(Did you ever find it again?).

Are you super thick, Sluffy, or just pretending to be super thick?

Ten Bobsworth wrote:Are you super thick, Sluffy, or just pretending to be super thick?

Sticks and stones Bob, is that all you've got?

What did you do in the last TWENTY-FOUR YEARS being the first person in the world to know that the Post Office scandal was going on?

Are you still claiming politicians had their hands all over this from the very start?

Are you denying that the POL Board wasn't told by the Post Office own Head of Legal that Horizon had reliability and probity and that the Private Eye claims were simply bollocks in 2012 and Vennells and van der Bogerd were in Parliament telling the Parliamentary Committee that Horizon was 'robust'(!) as late as 2015?  (Bates v Post Office commenced in 2017)

Who are these TPTB if not the politicians and POL Board members?

Where is the proof on which you've claimed all that you have to date?

Don't you deal in facts anymore?

Kia ora to you.

boltonbonce wrote:

Good to know that, as ever, you are keeping a diligent eye on proceedings, Boncey.

You may never have heard of Eleanor Shaikh but she had this to say in her work, 'Origins of a Disaster':

'Once the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) had made his decision (to foist Horizon on to the Post Office), in May 1999 there were to be no more doubts voiced about the system, no more delays or dissent. Inconvenient truths pertaining to its integrity had to be worked around and airbrushed from view.'

https://www.jfsa.org.uk/uploads/5/4/3/1/54312921/origins_of_a_disaster_-_summary_-_eleanor_shaikh.pdf

'Inconvenient truths'. Always the fly in any ointment.

I can't help thinking that some of the people being questioned would have been better suited to other professions. Medicine perhaps? Then again.....

Ten Bobsworth wrote:Good to know that, as ever, you are keeping a diligent eye on proceedings, Boncey.

You may never have heard of Eleanor Shaikh but she had this to say in her work, 'Origins of a Disaster':

'Once the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) had made his decision (to foist Horizon on to the Post Office), in May 1999 there were to be no more doubts voiced about the system, no more delays or dissent. Inconvenient truths pertaining to its integrity had to be worked around and airbrushed from view.'

https://www.jfsa.org.uk/uploads/5/4/3/1/54312921/origins_of_a_disaster_-_summary_-_eleanor_shaikh.pdf

Bob, your link doesn't work.

I don't think you are able to link directly to a pdf document?

It took me quite sometime to actually find it but if anyone wants to read it (I certainly wont be doing as I'll explain why below) they can access it by clicking on this link initially...

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/false-accounts-london-run-review-by-eleanor-shaikh/

...then clicking on the highlighted phrase 'a mammoth document on the disastrous origins of the Horizon IT system' contained within the text of the article.

Why won't I be reading it?

Well three reasons really, the article derives from a website named Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (the logo is shown on the top of the tab on your web browser.

The first reason is the title of the document The Role Of Her Majesty’s Government In Shaping Horizon And The Post Office 1998-2000 and its length (Page 1 of 579).

I simply don't believe for one moment that a series of continuous governments have involved themselves in a secret conspiracy lasting over TWENTY-FIVE YEARS that has necessitated the country's THREE senior political parties (Labour/ Coalition Lib Dem and Conservative/ and Conservative to present day) partaking in respect of a computer fuck up, cover up, at the Post Office, and I certainly wont be wasting what remains of my life going through some random woman's gargantuan tome over nearly 600 pages, on something she believed Tony Blair did.

I would have thought his immediate successor as Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who clearly had no time for Blair, would have 'stuck the knife in' to Blairs reputation on this if it was indeed so 'wrong' - let alone the raft of Tory Prime Ministers since?

My second reason is who is Eleanor Shaikh?

I can hardly find ANY footprint of her, which seems somewhat odd for someone these days?

The best I can come up with his her Twitter profile -

https://twitter.com/ElCShaikh?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Considering she follows more people (3,968) than follows her (3,290), it seems to suggest to me that she isn't seen to be relevant by many (indeed anyone other than government cover up conspiracist believers like Bob) to the actual truth of what really had gone on.

I mean if there REALLY WAS a multi government cover up for TWENTY-FIVE YEARS wouldn't you think it would be front and centre of the Inquiry and would have brought the government down by now - look at the outcry when Boris had a few drinks at number 10 during Covid for instance?

My third reason ties back to my first in that it relates to the website that linked to Eleanor Shaikh dissertation or whatever it was (she wouldn't have written all she did for fun would she?)

The Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance has this statement on the front of its website under one of its five headings, Parliament...

Parliament

Over the years, the group has been campaigning for Post Office and its Horizon computer system to be investigated.  Many Parliamentarians, across all parties in both Houses, continue to support the victims group in their search for justice.

Most MPs will have at least one of the victims in their constituency and many have tried to get Post Office to address the serious concerns being expressed about Horizon, but year after year, Post Office's senior executives have fobbed off the politicians with lies and reassurances of how 'robust' the system is.

Many of the occasions that the issue has been raised in Parliament can be viewed on YouTube.

https://www.jfsa.org.uk/

It seems to me that even the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance doesn't believe there has been a government cover up - but rather that the Post Office has been the cover-uppers (if there is such a word?) to keep it AWAY from the government throughout all the years the scandal has been happening.

That's my position until FACTS can be produced to the contrary - and up to now I haven't seen any...

...and my request to Bob to link me to any he's seen, has yet again been completely ignored..!!!

(almost as though there is none!)