plus: Bath Festival talk

Hi there

I’m on my way back to Surrey after a quick trip to Somerset to take part in the Bath Festival.

It was a privilege to spend some time with former Post Office manager Nicki Arch and her husband Steve, Rebecca Thomson (who broke the story about the Post Office Horizon scandal), John Hollingworth (who plays James Hartley in Mr Bates vs the Post Office) and my publishers Helen Lacey and David Chaplin at Bath Publishing.

Rebecca hosted the talk, which I’m deeply embarrassed about as she is one of my heroes, and I wanted to hear more about how she broke the story, but the real stars of the show were Nicki and John. Nicki for telling us about what happened to her in every shocking detail, and John, who is just the loveliest man – explaining what went on behind the scenes in making the Mr Bates… drama.

Content, Wallis

On the four trains I needed to take to get to Bath Spa from Walton (all nearly on time) I wrote another blog post about Paula Vennells’ evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.

Across the three days of evidence she gave, I still don’t understand how and why Vennells was so hands off. And I still think the most important thing to come out of her evidence was the failure to properly address the letter from the CCRC.

Vennells pushed a letter addressed directly to her to some minions and singularly failed to follow it up. She had information she could have given the CCRC and she did not volunteer it to them.

Forget her awful emails about the media coverage – this is where the police investigation should go.

In hiding for a bit

The inquiry is not sitting next week. It’s my son’s 13th birthday today which I am sure I told Mrs Wallis about when I mentioned my proposed day trip out west. I need to get my wrist (physio), teeth (a bit fell off one recently), nose (keeps randomly bleeding) and eyes (deteriorated to the point I couldn’t read the wedding speech I’d written) seen to over the next few days, so I’m not going to send you many emails before Tuesday week.

Nonetheless I am thrilled and grateful to all the respondents who have signed up and/or made the effort to get in touch recently. I do appreciate your perspective on things, and I am almost certain that by passing on some information to relevant people, Jane MacLeod has been found. And it won’t be long before we all know where Mike Young is, too.

Enjoy your Bank Holiday Monday.

Nick