Morning secret emailers

Just over six weeks ago Alan Bates stood outside the High Court’s Rolls building holding in his arms an enormous and significant judgment.

He gave a press conference and a series of interviews in the immediate aftermath of the judgment, as did James Hartley, a litigation partner at Freeths and the lead solicitor on Bates and others v Post Office for the claimants.

I have used a small fraction of the money you have kindly donated to get the interviews Alan Bates and James Hartley gave me transcribed so they can be published on www.postofficetrial.com for the record. Here they are. I hope you find reading them useful.

Business as usual

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Post Office’s manoeuvrings since then, they’ve certainly managed to draw attention away from just how much of a game-changing judgment it is.

Indeed, it seems as far as the Post Office is concerned, it is business as usual. I don’t think any existing Postmasters have been informed by the Post Office that the way they do business with the Post Office has potentially materially changed in the light of this judgment.

I am told by a Post Office insider (yes, they are starting to make contact) that this is because if the Post Office inform Postmasters that significant clauses in their contract are now considered to be “onerous” and “unenforceable” as J Fraser has found them to be, it would be seen as an admission that his judgment is correct. Whilst the Post Office still has the option to appeal the judgment, it doesn’t want to be seen to be doing anything like that, and so the Postmasters, without crucial information from either the Post Office or the NFSP, continue obliviously, as before.

Speaking of the NFSP, I am grateful to Christopher Head for drawing attention to a weird piece written by Calum Greenhow in City AM essentially begging people to continue using their local Post Office. I really wish he would agree to a proper interview about the state of the Post Office network and the NFSP’s role in that.

More to come

I have had a couple more interviews transcribed and will post them up in due course. In the meantime, if the weather is as lovely for you as it is down here in sunny, fume-choked London, enjoy it.

Kind regards

Nick