Sarah’s harrowing story

Morning all

I hope you don’t mind me sending you daily secret emails whilst the Radio 4 series is on air.

Today’s features Sarah Burgess Boyde, a former Subpostmaster from Newcastle. As you will know if you have been listening to the first two episodes, former Subpostmaster Jo Hamilton has told us what happened to her, and we also have been introduced Alan Bates, founder of the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance.

As a result we know there are serious and important issues which need further investigation. What we haven’t done in any detail is look at the hows and whys of the Post Office’s attitude and actions. This episode starts to do that.

I don’t want to say anything more other than to offer my profound thanks to Sarah, and Bob, my producer, who first contacted Sarah and got her permission to tell her story in quite an extraordinary way. Sarah’s story first came to my attention in Neil Tweedie’s excellent article for the Daily Mail back in 2015. We have done something very different to Neil (radio being a very different medium) and I think the result is the most powerful episode of the series so far (though as I write I’ve only heard the first three – so my thoughts on that may change!)

I hope you are “enjoying” what you’re hearing. I am certainly incredibly grateful for all the comments which have been flying about on social media and coming to me via email. I am especially heartened to hear from people new to the story, who simply had no idea this was happening.

Those are in the vast majority, by the way. I doubt more than 100,000 people are aware of this scandal in the entire country – which is what makes this Radio 4 series so important. It will reach people in a way little else can.

If you’re a secret emailer who has come on board because you first heard the story on Radio 4 – please let me know. And thanks!

More exciting housekeeping

Yesterday I managed to sort out the Judgments menu on the Post Office Trial website. Today I managed to affix the Common Issues trial transcripts to the dates they were created (previously I had dumped them all on the blog in mid-January 2019 making them quite tricky to find, given the trial took place in 2018).

I am expecting a bit more traffic to Post Office Trial over the next few days so I am trying to water the hanging baskets, sweep the step and polish the windows a bit.

The next task is to complete the Horizon trial menu page (which currently includes everything except the actual judgment), and possibly make it feel a bit more responsive and/or colourful.

My 15yo daughter took a look at the blog the other day and said “it’s a bit 2010”. She’s right. Incidentally if you want to know what she thinks a good website looks like – have a scroll through Apple’s page for its new iphone SE. Intuitive and magic. I don’t think Post Office Trial will ever look like that, but it’s good to have something to aspire to!

I’ve spotted some interesting articles recently. Tom Witherow at the Daily Mail has written up the 900 prosecutions figure, as has Izzy Lyons at the Daily Telegraph (££). Both have included nice plugs for the Radio 4 series.

Audio extraction

Don’t forget to tune in to Episode 3: of the Great Post Office Trial today live here at 1.45pm on BBC Radio 4. Eps 1 and 2 are available for you to listen to now here, along with all the others after they go out.

If you download the BBC Sounds app, you can have the great Post Office Trial delivered straight to your device by subscribing to it within the app. Don’t tell anyone, but I think that technically makes it a podcast, though I hope the BBC will allow the series to be made available on all podcast platforms soon. I think it has a good episodic “page-turner” feel.

I’m on BBC Sussex at 9.05am today talking about the story if you fancy tuning in to that too. Danny Pike, the presenter, is a former colleague of mine and has been wonderful about keeping the story alive on his radio station.

Right, I’m off. Have a great day. And do please keep the emails coming. I’m sorry if I can’t get back to everyone immediately, but I do read everything and I am immensely grateful to for all the correspondence.

Many thanks

Nick

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