The testimony of the last few days at the enquiry makes it clear the first priority for Vennells and the PO management was avoiding any legal liability that would have come from admitting there were errors with Horizon. It is also clear that Vennells really should be facing charges since she was determined to carry on prosecuting people well pas the point at which others were calling for a halt.
Largest ever miscarriage of justice?
- Thread starter Garrison
- Start date
Did you see last week's HIGNFY? After Hislop ranted about this scandal Paul Merton reminded the audience of the part Private Eye played in bringing it to public attention. He then solemnly added that that was still not sufficient reason to buy it.
The have also uncovered the fact that the Chief of the Police force 'investigating' Angela Rayner was a speaker at the Tory party conference in Manchester, and not at the main event but at a right wing fringe meeting.
I’ve just finished watching these two too.
HOLY **** indeed!!!
They released these programmes in 2024. They don’t mention the Private Eye article. I’m looking for a date on it before I read it. When did the Private Eye article come out?
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
Private Eye have been covering this story for many years.
This is the one I meant. I can’t find a date.
Filippo Lippi
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catsmate
No longer the 1
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The Eye started covering the Horizon debacle in 2011 after being approached by an obscure BBC local radio journalist named Nick Wallis. Wallis had been covering the case of Seema Misra (convicted and jailed while pregnant) and had done some methodical digging. He also poked the BBC to report the story, though not at national level. This led to the first whistleblower from Fujitsu/ICL coming forward.
It should be noted that this was not the first media coverage on the scandal. In 2009 Computer Weekly broke the story with detailed allegations of faults, meticulously researched and written by Rebecca Thomson and Tony Collins (the latter was the editor and persisted in the story despite denials and legal threats) and Sion Tecwyn covered it for BBC Wales (in Welsh).
From then on the Eye and Wallis persisted with the story, culminating the the 2020 piece Justice Lost In The Post, which led to an award winning BBC radio series. This led to a more detailed investigation which Wallis published in his book, The Great Post Office Scandal in NOV2021.
There are lots of details on Nick's blog. Drop him a few quid if you can, he deserves it.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for all that!
I see the blog has moved to https://www.postofficescandal.uk/ and is being updated a lot recently.
I will be ordering Wallis’ book! This story has really captured my imagination.
Eta: the ITV series and documentary both feature the Computer Weekly article, but not Private Eye, which I find curious. The documentary said Computer Weekly waited a year before publishing, due to fear of legal repercussions.
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Filippo Lippi
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Private Eye can be a bit divisive, possibly, criticises the advertising industry regularly, and the editor is strongly associated with the BBC, all reasons why ITV might not want to give it due credit in the drama. Or that part may have been cut for dramatic reasons
Thank you, but I’m still confused.
Private Eye has been covering it for several years, as already noted, and I would suspect they have regularly published updated summaries.
Thank you, but I’m still confused.
Not as confused as our police and prosecutors, who are very confused as why all this fuss has been made about thieving subpost masters getting their just deserts whilst the terrible and unfair and harrowing and emotionally damaging allegations about post office executives are going unpunished.
No the inquiry seems to be doing its job. But we have people under oath admitting their part in a conspiracy - knowingly and deliberately - to pervert the course of justice, and admitting they committed perjury in many trials (and other offences) but for some reason our police and prosecutors don't seem to be paying attention.
Nobody from Post Office or Fujitsu have been charged? I’ll be very glad if/when they have.
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
Not yet, but it must surely follow after all the evidence of perjury and the rest.
The general view in the Carrot Flower household, based on decades of experience of UK public sector (NHS, local authorities, universities) management, is that a whole heap of what we have heard is consistent with our experiences, such as the "bring me solutions, not problems" culture, which shields top level managers from actually knowing anything nasty.
That latter way of doing things did lead to a couple of folk I know getting huge payoffs, as they were the ones who buried all the inconvenient things to prevent chief execs knowing about them.
See also many, many public and private sector fiascos here and elsewhere which eventually leak out years later.
commandlinegamer
Philosopher
It is useful at holding others in the media to account, but it's not perfect, a notable fail being its criticism of MMR vaccination based on Wakefield's word, which it eventually admitted was a mistake.
Several of the witnesses at the enquiry have had to be specifically reminded of their rights regarding self-incrimination, and I would imagine that once the inquiry is done a number of people are going to be facing criminal charges, Paula Venells being at the top of the list.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
