Kevin

#PostOfficeScandal Arise.... Sir Alan Bates🎖️ A Huge Congratulations🙂 There cannot be a more deserving person in the country of this award. For over two decades Alan has led the JFSA (Justice for Sub Postmasters Alliance) in a constant David vs Goliath battle against the @PostOffice and their shareholder the government. Against all odds as both the Post Office and the Department for Business threw everything at the High Court GLO (as well as over £100m over taxpayer cash) and then attempting to recuse Justice Fraser for apparent bias, two landmark Judgements were handed down. These are known as the Common Issues Judgement and the Horizon Issues Judgement. @BBCEmmaSimpson reporting for @BBCNews wrote :- Bates learned of knighthood at Post Office inquiry‼️ The campaigner and former sub-postmaster, Alan Bates, was at the public inquiry into the Post Office scandal when he received the news that he was to be knighted in the King's Birthday Honours. He had travelled from his home in Llandudno to hear former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells give evidence, breaking her near-decade long silence. “It was all a bit of a surprise,” Sir Alan, as he is now known, told the BBC. He was told that he had to let the Honours Committee know by the end of the day whether he would accept. For the last 15 years, Sir Alan has campaigned for justice for hundreds of sub-postmasters who were wrongfully prosecuted for theft and false accounting, when faulty software called Horizon made it look like money was missing from their accounts. He had already rejected the offer of an OBE last year, telling the Honours Committee that it would be inappropriate to accept it whilst Ms Vennells kept hold of her CBE for services to the Post Office and many victims continued to suffer. Ms Vennells handed back her CBE earlier this year amid mounting pressure in the aftermath of the ITV drama in January which sparked national outrage over the scandal. “I went and had a confidential talk with somebody who knows what’s gone on over the years and they said to me, 'well you’ve done the heavy lifting, others are doing the rest now.' And on reflection, I knew so many people who were keen for me to actually receive something, I felt I would be insulting them as much as anyone else if I refused it at this time," Sir Alan said. He insisted the honour was not just for him but also for his group, the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance, which he started in 2009. “I think it’s another string to my bow to try and drive the rest of the campaign home. We have got to get funding for everybody. And that’s been my priority now for some time. And if it helps there, then great. It’s wonderful.” Sir Alan said his work was far from finished, adding that he would pursue court action, if necessary, to get financial redress for the victims who took part in the original High Court action that helped expose the Horizon IT scandal. “I think the nation will support us if we have to go ahead with another case,” he said. The former sub-postmaster's dogged pursuit of the truth began after refusing to accept losses at his own post office which he took over in 1998. Had he ever thought about giving up and letting it go? “I could never do that. We’ve all seen the horror stories, and there are so many. I keep hearing from so many more these days who are coming out of the woodwork and stories that have never been told. I mean, they’re absolutely diabolical. What’s happened to people is very sad but at least they’re now starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel for themselves.” He described his work as the best unpaid job he’d ever had and said he was looking forward to having a holiday this summer. Read the piece here⏬ bbc.com/news/articles/c722kz… #MrBatesVsThePostOffice #MrBates #MrBatesVsPostOffice #MrBatesPBS #PostOfficeInquiry #SirAlanBates

#PostOfficeScandal Latest piece for @SkyNews by @SkyNewsAdele & @SkyNewsEmilyJ Arriving in by cab and flanked once more by MET police officers Vennell’s was asked if she was ‘lying’‼️ Day 1 was tough but day 2 quietly worse. She then got into all the things she didn’t do (X is not long enough to list all those). “I never once withheld information” “I was not trying to close anything down” “I would not cover anything up” And it went on time and time again all day long❗️ Accused of putting the brand first above investigating miscarriages of justice. Asked if she had taken the advice of her PR guy who she appeared to rely on so heavily, Mark Davies (@markdavies67 ), of course she could not remember. I’m sure she remembers writing him an email saying that she attributed getting her CBE partly to him as he got the business through ‘very stormy waters’ and he ‘always got the big calls right’‼️ Then an email devastating to Vennell’s where she wrote about the mediation scheme from back in 2013 was that she hoped to ‘avoid or minimise compensation’‼️ Even though she wrote it herself or maybe it was her computer malfunctioning like Horizon writing things without her input ⌨️💻 , she would probably call it an ‘exception or an anomaly’ thanks to the IT expertise of her husband, she denied it meant what it said. There was a good exchange with Jason Beer KC about it. Watch the clip below👇 #MrBatesVsThePostOffice #MrBates #MrBatesVsPostOffice #MrBatesPBS #PostOfficeInquiry

#PostOfficeScandal Yesterday @MarinaHyde from the @guardian was at @PostOffInquiry and she wrote up a piece on Paula Vennell's first day of testimony. Rev Vennells wept but couldn’t remember much about sending innocent subpostmasters to jail. All so long ago‼️ The former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells would like the victims of the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history to know that she hasn’t actually done anything deliberately wrong, and that she honestly doesn’t understand how all this has happened. I guess she’s asking all the jailed and wrongly convicted subpostmasters to try to imagine being swept up in a Kafkaesque nightmare of undue blame. So … please add the murder of irony to her notional future charge sheet. The former @PostOffice CEO Paula Vennells would like the victims of the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history to know that she hasn’t actually done anything deliberately wrong, and that she honestly doesn’t understand how all this has happened. I guess she’s asking all the jailed and wrongly convicted subpostmasters to try to imagine being swept up in a Kafkaesque nightmare of undue blame. So … please add the murder of irony to her notional future charge sheet. To Aldwych House in London, then, where Paula produced tears in time for the lunchtime bulletins and reprised them for the section in which her emails seemingly found her on a fishing expedition for other “contributory factors” that might have caused an appallingly persecuted subpostmaster to take his own life. Pressed early by the inquiry’s Jason Beer KC how on earth she hadn’t known what was going on, Paula explained: “I was too trusting.” Barely a quarter of an hour later this humblebrag had done a complete 180, as she said: “I was sometimes criticised at team development events for being too curious.” Was she? At one stage Vennells had even been unaware that her organisation employed a team of about 100 enforcers driving private prosecutions. Today they were hearing the testimony of an absolutely key figure in the Post Office scandal – who hasn’t uttered a word in public on it for almost 10 years, much to the anguish of the many subpostmasters packing the room to finally get a bit more clarity on how their lives were, y’know, ruined by the organisation she ran. Memorable exchanges were also available in the evidence. Take the texts between Paula and the former Royal Mail CEO Moya Greene from only earlier this year, which were projected excruciatingly on the big screen, and read like dialogue in a bad daytime detective drama. “I think you knew,” Greene typed to Vennells. “How could you not have known? … I can’t support you now after what I have learned.” Paula explained to the inquiry that her obliviousness was something to do with the lack of “corporate memory” about the birth of the Horizon system. Alas, Beer – and forgive the slide into legalese – simply didn’t have time for this shit, replying: “How come we’ve been able to find it out just by asking for the documents?” Watching Vennells today, I found her a wholly inadequate holy inadequate, and kept wondering what was really going on beneath the mandated contrition. Maybe she still hangs on to the secret conviction that subpostmasters were actually on the take, or being led into temptation, as one of her emails put it in a weirdo echo of the Lord’s prayer. Read the full piece here👇theguardian.com/commentisfre… #MrBatesVsThePostOffice #MrBates #MrBatesVsPostOffice #MrBatesPBS #PostOfficeInquiry #Vennells #PaulaVennells

#PostOfficeScandal Today is a landmark day for this scandal & for the @PostOffInquiry Former @PostOffice Network Director and then more importantly the CEO between 2012 and 2019 where we now know the organisation were made aware on many occaaions of problems with the Horizon system. Nobody seems to know why they were copied into emails, others didn’t read emails, many didn’t read the attachments to emails (supposedly) and even when they did the information was tightly controlled usually using legal privilege - which in many cases should not have applied. We have seen more emails and secret recordings in the last 24 hours to again suggest there has been a monumental cover-up of issues with Horizon in order to maintain the Post Office’s reputation and shield individuals from blame. Anyone want to guess how many ‘I do not recall or I do not remember’ we will hear today❓ Watch live on youtube from 09:45 to hear for the first time in public what she has got to say. Will she tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth⁉️ Or will she try to save her own skin❗️ Youtube link :- youtube.com/@postofficehoriz… #MrBatesVsThePostOffice #MrBates #MrBatesVsPostOffice #MrBatesPBS #PostOfficeInquiry