Barrister loses patience with former Post Office executive: ‘That’s just word soup’
26 apr 2024
A former Post Office executive was condemned for using “word soup” jargon by a frustrated barrister during the Horizon IT inquiry on Friday 26 April.
On her second day of giving evidence, Angela van den Bogerd was asked about the cases of several individual subpostmasters and their branches.
Her response, when questioned on the specifics of settlement negotiations with Martin Griffiths, drew a frustrated outburst from Jason Beer KC, lead counsel to the inquiry.
“What does that mean? That’s just word soup,” he said, repeating part of Ms van den Bogerd’s answer back to her.
Ex-Post Office chief denies cover-up over remote access emails
25 apr 2024
Angela van den Bogerd has told the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal she did not recall receiving emails warning her that software maker Fujitsu would remotely access the accounts of sub-postmaters.
Ms van den Bogerd was the former people services director at the Post Office and handled complaints about the Horizon system.
A fault in the company’s software led to dozens of sub-postmasters being wrongfully convicted in connection with missing funds.
Post Office: Paula Vennells only wanted to pay sub-postmasters ‘token’ compensation, inquiry hears
26 apr 2024
Paula Vennells only wanted to pay wrongly convicted sub-postmasters “token” compensation payments.
Minutes from a February 2014 meeting shown to the inquiry show the then Post Office chief executive complaining that a planned mediation scheme was projected to potentially pay out a total of £100 million.
“It was noted by PV [Paula Vennells] that the projected level of claims was currently c. £100[million], in response to which SS [Second Sight, a forensic accounting firm involved in auditing Horizon] noted that their back of the envelope calculation was of the order of £25 to £50m,” the minutes read.
“PV observed that this was a long way from the figures that were in mind when the scheme was established, which were much smaller, and more of the nature of a ‘token’ with an apology.”
The meeting was attended by Ms Vennells, Chris Aujard, the Post Office’s general counsel respectively, and Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson from Second Sight.
Retractable Bed Gone Wrong
11 jul 2011
This poor disabled man just cannot catch a break. He’s just trying to find a decent bed to sleep in! Prank victims help wheel the crippled man in his wheelchair to the bed store, and he tests out one bed that looks promising. But then the victims press a button accidentally, and the man is retracted into the wall and crushed, along with this brand new super powerful retractable bed. When they try to get him out, he’s left a human-shaped hole in the wall!
This page is still under construction