Archives :
Nick Wallis
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The Hatchet Man: Aujard gives evidence
Chris Aujard presents as thoughtful, intelligent and professional – a very different person to the one boasting about his crisis management skills shortly after leaving the Post Office in 2015. Older and wiser, perhaps, or better at image projection. Aujard was involved in a deliberate attempt to frustrate Second Sight’s independent investigation into the Post…
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The Bleatings of a Sorry Scapegoat: Susan Crichton’s Pity Party
Susan Crichton cut a sorry figure at the Inquiry today. A woman apparently trying to do the right thing, but not trying hard enough. A woman whose stated intentions were not borne out (and occasionally downright contradicted) by the documentary evidence. A woman who came up against a company board more interested in reputation management…
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The Second Sight Interim Report
I’ve been talking a lot recently about Second Sight’s Interim Report, written by Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson. It is a game-changing, short, easy-to-read document, released on 8 July 2013 which sets out all of the Post Office’s problems to them in clear language. It used to be published on the Post Office website, but…
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Penny’s Printouts
This is Penny Williams. Penny ran the Manaccan Post Office in Cornwall between 2007 and 2013. I have just come off stage with Penny at Launceston Town Hall where she spoke about her experiences at the hands of the Post Office. During our conversation, Penny revealed she has paper evidence of what appears to be…
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Lord Arbuthnot and the Lies
The former MP who started the Parliamentary campaign to help Subpostmasters in their fight for justice, gave evidence at the public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal on Wednesday. James Arbuthnot told inquiry he was first alerted to potential problems with the Horizon system during a coffee morning in his constituency, in 2009,…
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Phase 5 & 6 curtain-raiser: Alan the Man
Founder of the justice for Subpostmaster alliance Alan Bates today gave evidence to the public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. The Inquiry has resumed withafter a five week break, and is now entering a four month period of hearings, combining phases five and six of the planned seven phases. Phases 5 &…
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PR Week puts departed Post Office Comms Director in its “Power” Book
On Tuesday 27 February, the Post Office’s Director of Communications, Richard Taylor, left the Post Office. He had been suspended since 12 January after two recordings of him were made public by TalkTV. Curiously he has just been included in PR Week’s Power Book 2024, which celebrates “the most influential and respected comms professionals in…
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Chris’s Compensation Solutions
After yesterday’s parliamentary debate on Postmaster Compensation, former Subpostmaster Chris Head came up with his solutions for sorting everything out in a timely manner. Chris is a member of the Group Litigation Order (GLO) scheme, announced in 2022, by the (then) Postal Affairs Minister Paul Scully. For the last four years, however, Chris has been…
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Staunton shoots back
On 18 Feb, the Sunday Times published this extraordinary interview with Henry Staunton, the sacked chair of the Post Office. Staunton said there was a “toxic” culture within the Post Office, alleged that the government had told him to go slow on compensation payments and that the Post Office CEO had written to the Business…
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The unredacted Project Sparrow board minutes
On 26 Jan the BBC’s excellent economics correspondent Andy Verity published a story. Andy had eyes on two confidential Post Office documents which had previously only been published under FOI in heavily-redacted form. They were Project Sparrow board sub-committee meeting minutes from 9 and 30 April 2014. Project Sparrow was the codename given by the…