Mr Bates vs The Post Office

[Boringvolvodriver]

I am not up to date with today’s evidence but from what I’ve seen, I don’t think Williams should remain in his current post for much longer……….

Think he will become the fall guy for the rest of them. I.e “ Mr Williams out in house lawyer didn’t give us the correct information as he has, through his incompetence, missed the key points”

[Wills2]

He is desperate to delay and run the clock down, the constant interruptions, hearing issues, requests to repeat questions that he appears hell bent on not understanding, which he then responds to with a meaningless stream of words is a disgrace.

[Bonefish Blues]

Boringvolvodriver said:

I am not up to date with today’s evidence but from what I’ve seen, I don’t think Williams should remain in his current post for much longer……….

Think he will become the fall guy for the rest of them. I.e “ Mr Williams out in house lawyer didn’t give us the correct information as he has, through his incompetence, missed the key points”

Tricky indeed, particularly if he's facing a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice too.

[Wills2]

William's is going back to an office full of people like him with a management team full of people like him, the POL are still acting today as they have through out the scandal (it continues) there is no one cleaning house at the PO.

[outnumbered]

This current lawyer is spending far too long setting up his questions, and then posing them in an over-complicated way. Sir Wyn to the rescue.

[SeanyD]

How has no one in the room not lost their rag with Willilams / Clark Kent's waffly/fluffy/apologetic time-wasting act.

[KTF]

I never realised that the Post Office ran their own branches (Crown Offices) yet didn't go after whoever ran those when affected by the same Horizon bugs.

And yet they still claimed the system was fine...

[SydneyBridge]

The Barristers are doing brilliantly keeping calm and letting him dig his own giant hole

[TwinKam]

Williams making out that he is making notes with a pencil, but no more than two or three strokes in any given minute...

[732NM]

I've only seen yesterday AM so far. The bloke is a tt.

[CharlesElliott]

KTF said:

I never realised that the Post Office ran their own branches (Crown Offices) yet didn't go after whoever ran those when affected by the same Horizon bugs.

And yet they still claimed the system was fine...

The Postmasters that ran Crown Offices were employees. Those that run sub Post Offices were independent agents, and their contract held them accountable for any losses.

[vaud]

CharlesElliott said:

The Postmasters that ran Crown Offices were employees. Those that run sub Post Offices were independent agents, and their contract held them accountable for any losses.

So I wonder how many employees were investigated and went through disciplinary proceedings, and how many were reported to the police?

[CharlesElliott]

vaud said:

So I wonder how many employees were investigated and went through disciplinary proceedings, and how many were reported to the police?

I haven't seen conclusive evidence that none were, but there has been evidence that defecits in Crown Offices were just written off and there was no legal action against the employee.

[Bonefish Blues]

CharlesElliott said:

vaud said:

So I wonder how many employees were investigated and went through disciplinary proceedings, and how many were reported to the police?

I haven't seen conclusive evidence that none were, but there has been evidence that defecits in Crown Offices were just written off and there was no legal action against the employee.

From CCRC notes

After more than 900 prosecutions, around 580 sub-postmasters and Crown Office employees initiated civil proceedings against Post Office Ltd during which Post Office agreed to pay damages.

So yes, there were

[Wills2]

CharlesElliott said:

KTF said:

I never realised that the Post Office ran their own branches (Crown Offices) yet didn't go after whoever ran those when affected by the same Horizon bugs.

And yet they still claimed the system was fine...

The Postmasters that ran Crown Offices were employees. Those that run sub Post Offices were independent agents, and their contract held them accountable for any losses.

The contract couldn't hold them accountable for "any" losses and this is the nub of the issue, they would not be liable for losses caused by the Horizon system as an example, hence the conspiracy to cover up the issues with Horizon so they could try and make them accountable via the theft charge/false accounting ruse.

The PO were sustaining losses via Horizon and in order to place the blame on the PMs they had to cover up the system issues and prosecute the PMs for theft, which they then in the vast majority of cases dropped to a charge of false accounting if the PM agreed that Horizon had nothing to do with the issues (that was a key pillar of their strategy), as the knew they couldn't take all the cases to court as the chances of getting caught out would rise.

It was a planned, targeted and criminal exploitation of the law.

[CharlesElliott]

Wills2 said:

The contract couldn't hold them accountable for "any" losses and this is the nub of the issue, they would not be liable for losses caused by the Horizon system as an example, hence the conspiracy to cover up the issues with Horizon so they could try and make them accountable via the theft charge/false accounting ruse.

The PO were sustaining losses via Horizon and in order to place the blame on the PMs they had to cover up the system issues and prosecute the PMs for theft, which they then in the vast majority of cases dropped to a charge of false accounting if the PM agreed that Horizon had nothing to do with the issues (that was a key pillar of their strategy), as the knew they couldn't take all the cases to court as the chances of getting caught out would rise.

It was a planned, targeted and criminal exploitation of the law.

The contract held them accountable for all losses by the SPM, and the losses of their staff under most conditions. I agree that if they counter claimed that the system did not work that would be appropriate - which is exactly what Lee Castleton did - but unfortunately, he lost his case in court.

[dmsims]

As has already been explained to you that is simply incorrect:

The actual contract states:

CharlesElliott said:

The contract held them accountable for all losses by the SPM, and the losses of their staff under most conditions.

[simonrockman]

Karl Flinders gave a talk at my NUJ branch meeting. Unfortunately most of the time was spent on the story so far, but he did say something interesting about Capture, which he's not yet published.
Looking through the Capture code they found the logo for the Iranian post office.

[Maxdecel]

There's this I posted previously.

Maxdecel said:

If this mornings viewing is anything to go by it's going to be good.
How about season 2 The prequel - "Capture"
https://news.sky.com/story/review-ordered-into-ano...

[vaud]

simonrockman said:

Looking through the Capture code they found the logo for the Iranian post office.

Given the quote that it was found on floppy disks, assuming the code is not obfuscated it will present a simpler challenge for analysis.