The author, Nick Wallis, is a journalist and broadcaster who has been reporting on the scandal for over ten years and who acted as series consultant on Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the ITV drama that brought the affair into the national consciousness.
Below a shocking sentence from video 1 of Alan Cook at minute 2:30. The whole video has a a heartbreaking content.
It was the most profound structural injustice: an amateurish and notorious charge of theft was being used as a sledgehammer to force a plea or crush the subpostmaster into submission.
Het was het meest diepgaande structurele onrecht: een amateuristische en beruchte beschuldiging van diefstal werd gebruikt als een sloophamer om een bekentenis af te dwingen of de subpostmeester tot overgave te dwingen.
1 Former Post Office boss Alan Cook challenged during inquiry over treatment of jailed sub-postmasters
12 apr 2024
A former managing director of the Post Office has said an email suggesting “subbies with their hands in the till” were blaming Horizon is one he will “regret for the rest of my life”.
Alan Cook, who was in the position from 2006-2010, described his words as “unacceptable” and denied it represented his actual views at the time.
2 Post Office inquiry: Former boss Alan Cook speaks of regret
12 apr 2024
Former Post Office managing director Alan Cook said that an email suggesting “subbies with their hands in the till” were blaming Horizon is one he will “regret for the rest of my life”.
At the start of the inquiry hearing, Cook made an apology to sub-postmasters and their families. He told the inquiry on Friday: “I wonder … if I could just say before we get started, I’d like to put on record most strongly my personal apology and sympathies with all sub-postmasters their families and those affected by this.
More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the government-owned organisation and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters are still awaiting compensation, despite the government having said that those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.
3 Ex-Post Office boss unaware he was head of prosecuting authority
12 apr 2024
The Post Office’s former managing director has said he did not realise for more than three years that he was the head of a prosecuting authority.
Alan Cook, who oversaw 160 prosecutions during his tenure from March 2006 to January 2010, told the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry that no one in his team had discussed with him how the organisation was bringing prosecutions itself without the involvement of the police. He said he blamed himself for not “picking up on it”.
Although the Post Office has no special authority to bring private prosecutions, it pursued cases against its staff using a unique investigation that which has existed in some form for hundreds of years.
4 Ex-Post Office boss cornered over possible cover-up of Horizon scandal in Inquiry hearing
David Smith faced the music at the Post Office Inquiry today, when he was quizzed on his knowledge of Horizon software defects after the publication of the Ismay report in 2010.
5 Ex-Post Office boss regrets ‘subbies with hands in the till’ line, inquiry hears
12 apr 2024
The former Post Office boss Alan Cook has said he regrets saying in an email in 2009 that he thought post office operators ‘with their hands in the till’ and were trying to blame the Horizon system for anomalies. He told the inquiry into the Horizon scandal: ‘It’s an expression I will regret for the rest of my life. It was an inappropriate thing to put in an email and not in line with my view of subpostmasters.’
6 Former Post Office Boss DODGES Questions⁉️
9 apr 2024 News
In this video, watch as i discuss the former post office boss Paula Vennells dodges questions and refuses to provide answers. Don’t miss this revealing video. Subscribe to our channel for more updates on this developing story.
7 Lord Arbuthnot says Paula Vennells was ‘defensive, legalistic and determined’ to keep info from MPs
Back to menu IMPORTANT CONTENT Listening recommended Must ***
10 apr 2024
Lord Arbuthnot said in his witness statement that certain Post Office staff had become “defensive, legalistic and determined to keep from MPs information about which they had previously promised to be open.”
He says today that this applied to former CEO Paula Vennells “particularly,” but also others
8 POST OFFICE BOSS DAVID SMITH TRIES AN APOLOGY AND WHITEWASH REPORT
9 DAMNING Barrister Advice NOT Shown to Post Office Security
10 Post Office DUMPS 73,000 Documents on to Inquiry!
10 apr 2024
Support DPS Computing and independent journalism!
Post Office DUMPS 73,000 Documents on to the Post Office Inquiry in the lead up to Phases 5 and 6 opening whilst they are undertaking FIVE separate disclosure reviews that are at various stages of completeness with some ongoing.
The sheer amount of documents continually disclosed late to the Post Office Inquiry are presenting problems scheduling witness and may lead to some witnesses having to be recalled to the Inquiry or delaying the Post Office Inquiry.
11 ‘I blame the Post Office for my husband’s death’: Widow speaks about Horizon compensation | ITV News
12 apr 2024
For the twenty years of her widowhood, Gowri has wondered: what really happened on the last day of her husband’s life.
The facts of his death are simple. But the sudden financial crisis that drove him to suicide remains mysterious.
“There were two officers. And I think the police also came. And I asked them, ‘where is he? Where is my husband?’ And they said he is under audit. Under investigation.”
Jayakanthan ran a string of convenience stores. And he’d recently taken on a Post Office branch in west London. Suddenly, there was money missing from its accounts.
12 Jo Hamilton ‘Continues to Fight’ as Post Office Scandal Inquiry Resumes
Back to menu IMPORTANT CONTENT Listening recommended Must ***
9 apr 2024
Justice campaigner and former Sub-postmaster Alan Bates takes the stand for the penultimate phase of the Horizon IT inquiry. Hundreds of sub-postmasters had their lives ruined by allegations of theft and false accounts by the Post Office, including Jo Hamilton, who was also depicted in the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates Vs The Post Office’
Jo joins us today to update us on her fight for justice and compensation, and reveals that she has reached the end of her ‘financial journey’ after settling in January. She says Alan Bates will ‘get a chance to actually tell some things that he hasn’t been able to before’ when he speaks in the public inquiry for the first time today.
Broadcast on 09/04/24
13 Post Office Investigator denies behaving like a ‘mafia gangster’
14 How the Post Office scandal tore one North London’s dad’s life apart
Back to menu IMPORTANT CONTENT Listening recommended Must ***
12 jan 2024
Former Post Office manager Kamran Ashraf, 46, and his former sub-postmistress wife Siema Kamran, 48, bought the Hampstead Heath Post Office between 2001 and 2003.
They felt forced to plead guilty to theft when £25,000 went missing from their Post Office, despite being innocent, and he was sentenced to nine months in jail in 2004.
The father-of-three spent 10 weeks behind bars and eventually had his conviction overturned in 2020, receiving more than £200,000 in compensation so far.
He now works for the Department for Work and Pensions and has been diagnosed with severe PTSD. The couple are still yet to receive full compensation for the mental toll, his time in prison and other losses.
Educational
15 Post Office investigator challenged over failure to follow up on ‘glitches’ in Horizon IT system
Back to menu IMPORTANT CONTENT Listening recommended Must ***
24 jan 2024
A Post Office investigator was challenged over his reaction to a helpline telling postmaster there were ‘glitches’ in the Horizon IT system.
Raymond Grant, a former investigator, was challenged during the inquiry into the scandal that saw hundreds of post office employees convicted due to errors in the system.
16 Post Office investigator grilled over Horizon scandal in Inquiry hearing
Stephen Bradshaw tells the Post Office inquiry that a legal team wrote his witness statement, that he “in hindsight” doesn’t approve of.
17 Post Office Horizon Fraud Inquiry IT investigation 10 Years Ago
Back to menu IMPORTANT CONTENT Listening recommended Must ***
The Post Office itself brought many of the cases to court, and between 1999 and 2015, it prosecuted 700 people – an average of one person a week. Another 283 cases were brought by other bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Many of those convicted went to prison for false accounting and theft.
Post Office scandal explained: What the Horizon saga is … – BBC
Nick Wallis book “The Great Post Office Scandal:
The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail” (562 pages) is the extraordinary story behind the recent ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
It tells of how thousands of subpostmasters were accused of theft and false accounting on the back of evidence from Horizon, the flawed computer system designed by Fujitsu, and how a group of them, led by Alan Bates, took their fight to the High Court.
Their eventual victory in court vindicated their claims about the defects of the software and exposed the heavy handed attempts by the Post Office to suppress them.
The book also recounts how successive senior managers, business leaders, lawyers, civil servants and Government ministers, at best failed to expose the injustice or, even worse, sought to cover it up, resulting in one of the largest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
As the public inquiry reaches its climax, and senior figures such as Paula Vennells come to be questioned, The Great Post Office Scandal reveals the full scale of what happened and how so many of our trusted institutions allowed the saga to go on for nearly a quarter of a century, shattering the lives of thousands of innocent people.
About the Author
Nick Wallis is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. His work on the Post Office story has been published by Private Eye and broadcast on The One Show and two Panorama specials. He has written and presented the Radio 4 series – The Great Post Office Trial – and is Series Consultant on the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
18 Ian Hislop embarrasses MPs in their own select committee on lobbying and transparency
Back to menu IMPORTANT CONTENT Listening recommended Must ***
25 jan 2022 HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Ian Hislop, Solomon Hughes and Richard Brooks of Private Eye attended the parliamentary select committee on standards to give evidence today.
Proceedings became combative and at times cringeworthy as the journalists began reading out the MPs’, who were meant to be asking the questions, own registers of interest as examples of the lack of transparency in British politics.
Tories Sir Bernard Jenkin and Alberto Costa both seemed quite distressed.
19 Just Ian Hislop bodying Tory MPs
Go toe to toe with the king you best prepare for embarrassment.
20 Ian Hislop’s appearance on Peston, wherein he hands Jake Berry his arse…
21 Marriage For Money Prank
2 apr 2011
A young man weds an older woman for her money and he is disgusted by her. I’d hate to remind him there’s still the honeymoon to go.