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Largest ever miscarriage of justice?

Wudang said:
Isn't Bates a Knight Bachelor which ranks below the chivalric orders like the British Empire? He previously turned down an OBE as Venells was a CBE at the time.
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No. The Order of the British Empire has five levels, the top two being knighthoods. CBEis the third.
 
https://www.guidelondon.org.uk/blog/british-monarchy/the-uk-honours-system/

Around 2000 honours are awarded each year and are published in an Honours List on the monarch’s official birthday in June and on New Year’s Day. They are made up of around

400 Members of the British Empire (MBEs),
200 Orders of the British Empire (OBEs),
90 Companions of the British Empire,
40 Knights or Dames of the British Empire (KBE/DBE) or Knights/Dames of the British Empire Grand Cross (GBE).
Recipients of the first three awards can put the letters MBE, OBE or CBE behind their names, while recipients of the last two higher awards entitle the recipient to prefix with the title Sir (men) or Dame (women).
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Wudang said:
Are you saying no he's not a Knight Bachelor? Or something else
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Let me clarify.
Bates was made a Knight Bachelor which is the lowest 'grade' of knighthood and his is entitled to the honorific. It is an 'unaffiliated' knighthood, i.e. not a member of one of the chivalric orders (Order of the Bath, Order of the British Empire et cetera).
Even a lowly Knight Bachelor has precedence over the un-knighted lower three ranks of the Order of the British Empire (MBE, OBE, CBE).

The point is moot given that Vennells has forfeited her CBE.
 
Yeah I'm maybe being a bit pedantic. I thought people were assuming he was getting a title in the Order of the BE. I would assume that any honour that gives you the title "Sir" is above any honour that doesn't. Probably whoever decides the details didn't want to offer him an honour in the BE Order as he'd turned one down before and the KT is often awarded for public service.
 
I caught the live stream of National Federation of Sub Postofficemasters (NFSP) General Secretary, George Thomson, and I have to say that not even Alfred Hitchcock or Franz Kafka could have come up with a more macabre cast of headbangingly evil characters. OK, so despite its grand name and the grand job title of George Thomson; as Thomson points out, it is not actually a trade union, per se, as he scathingly avers, but a 'trade association'. Throughout his examination by a silk who showed the most incredible restraint and patience (but probably had to down a few stiff drinks in quick succession afterwards) Thomson sneered at the inferiority - in his dour Scots eyes - of unions such as CWU. When shown documentation of a sub-postofficemaster ('subbie') Lee Castleton, who lost his case and was ordered to pay the Post Office Limited costs of £330,000, Thomson riposted, Castleton was nowt to do with him, as he was a 'non-member' of NFSP). Mustering all of his self-control the silk tried again: but what about the members of NFSP; wouldn't investigating the facts of Castleton's case help them? He might just as well banged his head against a wall as Thomson belligerently ranted on about how the subbies with problems were just a minority and he knew of a subbie in Scotland whose son had embezzled £100K without his father knowing. So there.

The KC produced document after document from subbies explaining politely and in clear thoughtful detail of how the Horizon system had thrown up inexplicable errors. The KC then produced Thomson's standard response dismissing each such correspondence with a flippant, if there was an error in the system we would have had millions and trillions of more complaints from subbies all over the country given the volume of transactions but we don't. End of.

I thought black-shirted PO investigator Stephen Bradshaw was the epitome of a corporate jobsworth bully but George Thomson, GE of NFSP - of whose members he was supposed to be representing - just said, 'Hold my beer'.

The ever patient judge leading the inquiry, Sir Wynn, had to contain his irritation and lean in to ask Mr. Thomson if he accepted that the Horizon was proven to be faulty?

But George Thomson to this day still believes the Second Sight report was 'rubbish' as he put in writing in his emails to Paula Vennells and her posse of mean girls and boys.

A more cartoon-style arch-villain will be hard for the PO Inquiry to find.
 

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taking the shilling

The Guardian reported, "The inquiry heard that, in 2013, the NFSP signed a 15-year deal with the Post Office to represent all post office operatives in return for annual payments of more than £1m a year from 2014-15 onwards. [George] Thomson served as general secretary of the group between 2007 and 2018." The BBC also noted the payments (which increased over time), and went on to report, "In an email from Mark Davies, communications and corporate affairs director at the Post Office, sent on May 10 2015, part of the chain read: 'Our media relationships with George [Thomson] and team are very good at present - he has been tipping us off, privately, about people sniffing around Horizon.'"
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
The Guardian reported, "The inquiry heard that, in 2013, the NFSP signed a 15-year deal with the Post Office to represent all post office operatives in return for annual payments of more than £1m a year from 2014-15 onwards. [George] Thomson served as general secretary of the group between 2007 and 2018." The BBC also noted the payments (which increased over time), and went on to report, "In an email from Mark Davies, communications and corporate affairs director at the Post Office, sent on May 10 2015, part of the chain read: 'Our media relationships with George [Thomson] and team are very good at present - he has been tipping us off, privately, about people sniffing around Horizon.'"
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He was ratting to the hierarchy on his own members - those people he was supposed to be representing.

Bastard!!
 
Chris_Halkides said:
The Guardian reported, "The inquiry heard that, in 2013, the NFSP signed a 15-year deal with the Post Office to represent all post office operatives in return for annual payments of more than £1m a year from 2014-15 onwards. [George] Thomson served as general secretary of the group between 2007 and 2018." The BBC also noted the payments (which increased over time), and went on to report, "In an email from Mark Davies, communications and corporate affairs director at the Post Office, sent on May 10 2015, part of the chain read: 'Our media relationships with George [Thomson] and team are very good at present - he has been tipping us off, privately, about people sniffing around Horizon.'"
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I literally just gasped in shock and horror. :jaw-dropp
 
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