Archives :
Nick Wallis
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The Ismay Report
This is Rod Ismay. In 2010 he wrote what has become known as the Ismay Report. It was written as an internal Post Office response to the formation of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, the questions raised by MPs about the Horizon IT system and the first journalistic investigation into the Post Office’s wild, decade-long…
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Andrew Winn: the Over-promoted Postie
I first became fascinated by the Post Office’s willingness to place loyalty and length of service over ability in 2018 at the Bates v Post Office litigation at the High Court. During the litigation’s first trial, a succession of Post Office witnesses took the stand. Some were sharp, some were the dimmest of dim bulbs,…
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Post Office v Castleton – a second category Abuse of Process?
An extraordinary piece of evidence has been raised at the Post Office Horizon Inquiry. It came during the day long car crash which was Andrew Winn’s testimony. Winn was a hopelessly over-promoted former postie who eventually fetched up reporting to the Post Office’s Head of Product and Branch Accounting, Rod Ismay (author of the infamous…
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Pushing the Neidle: “Don’t pay the tax now. Don’t take any step now, because I think there will be an exemption”
Nadhim Zahawi’s nemesis Dan Neidle, founder of Tax Policy Associates very kindly gave his time to appear on the latest episode of Investigating the Post Office Scandal. Dan got involved in this story after reading Tom Witherow’s 16 Feb article about Francis Duff in the Daily Mail. Mr Duff, a former Postmaster, was awarded £330,000…
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Inquiry re-start preview
Part 2 of Phase 3 of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry gets underway today. There will be three more weeks of evidence before another break until May, punctuated by another compensation hearing on 27 April. There are going to be some intriguing witnesses over the next three weeks. I have picked out a few.…
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Isabella Wall
I was contacted by Gavin Wall in September last year in my role as a trustee of the Horizon Scandal Fund. Gavin’s mum Isabella had been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. Isabella was one of the 555 litigants who took the Post Office to court and won in 2019. The fund provided some financial help…
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Altman General Review finally published
On Friday, a key document in understanding the Post Office scandal was brought to the surface. It is the 15 October 2013 General Review into the Post Office’s past prosecutions and future prosecution policy, written by Brian Altman KC. The Review came up almost in passing during former Post Office auditor Chris Gilding’s evidence to…
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A Christmas message to the Post Office CEO
Susan Craddock (above) has multiple sclerosis. She runs Largs Post Office in Ayrshire on Scotland’s West Coast. She cc’d me in the letter below. When I asked her if I could publish it she agreed, describing herself and many other Postmasters as “desperate”. There is something Dickensian in the tone of Susan’s letter. I couldn’t…
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Government ‘unveils’ compensation scheme for Subpostmasters in Bates v Post Office litigation
The government has announced some details of its compensation scheme for the civil claimants in the Bates v Post Office litigation. You can read the ‘process document’ here. The scheme will be run by BEIS, the government’s business department, and overseen by an ‘independent advisory board’ to ‘ensure the scheme works effectively’. Although there is…
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From the archives…
The gentleman behind this website – Andrew Neale, Master of the Dark Arts – is currently engaged in a mammoth project which involves taking every single secret email newsletter I have written and converting it into an archive. Each newsletter will then get posted up on this site once it is six months old. A…