badgerx16

HMRC are investigating some creative accounting at the PO: payments made as penalties, such as compensation to the SPMs, are not tax deductible for the purposes of Corporation Tax, but must be deducted before calculating profit related bonuses. The PO did the opposite, deducting the compensation before calculating their CT, thereby lowering their tax liability, but included them when calculating, and thereby Inflating, Director bonuses. Unfortunately this is likely to result in one government department fining another, with the tax payer footing the bill. If the full amount is found to be due the PO could effectively be insolvent.

Ian Hislop calls for Paula Vennels to be given back her CBE - so that she can be officially stripped of it.

It isn't just those that were sctually prosecuted that were shafted by Horizon, potentially hundreds of other SPMs avoided Court appearances by repaying shortfalls amounting to to hundreds of pounds from other sources of personal income.

My teenage years are fading into history.

Is that the same definition of "precise" that the IDF use ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743 "The BBC can reveal that in the period leading up to the broadcast of Trouble at the Post Office, the 2015 Panorama programme featuring the whistleblower testimony: Experts interviewed by the BBC were sent intimidating letters by Post Office lawyers about their participation in the programme Senior Post Office managers briefed the BBC that neither their staff nor Fujitsu - the company which built and maintained the Horizon system - could remotely access sub-postmasters' accounts, even though Post Office directors had been warned four years earlier that such remote access was possible Lawyers for the Post Office sent letters threatening to sue Panorama and the company's public relations boss Mark Davies escalated complaints to ever more senior BBC managers"

I heard this on the radio yesterday, and the appalling fact is that she doesn't have control of her money, the council that provides her assisted living runs her bank account and it is they that failed to pay the licence fee, but as it is in her name she was prosecuted.

In a Mafia hitman / SS camp guard sort of way. "I was only following orders"'.

Posted above; "....but, as the head of the CPS he would have been more than aware of the cases". "Postmasters were hounded by the Crown Prosecution Service during Sir Keir Starmer's time in charge"', what do you think the Daily Mail is trying to imply with this statement ? Daily Telegraph - "Starmer faces questions over why he failed to intervene in Post Office scandal". Nigel Farage : "“The DPP has the right to intervene in any prosecution. Where was Starmer?” I don't see the same issue being raised in relation to the other 3 DPPs who were in post during the prosecution period, 1999-2015.

The CPS prosecuted 3 cases whilst Kier Starker was DPP, and they would almost certainly not have required his input or approval. ( For context, the CPS prosecuted over 400 thousand cases last year, so there is no possible way any DPP could be aware of more than a fraction of these ).

In preparation for a second term and his vengeance against those that stole the last election, starting with Mike Pence and Brad Raffensberger .

John 11:35

And still they went to Court and testified that there were no known problems !

1)Terence Austin doesn't look Japanese to me 😉 2) A lot of mentions of ICL rather than FUJITSU. 😉

Maiden

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67921974 "An IT expert has criticised the Post Office for ignoring his report which found "concerning discrepancies" in its software more than 20 years ago. Jason Coyne, who worked for Preston-based Best Practice Plc at the time, was instructed to examine the computer system called Horizon in 2003. He said he notified the Post Office the data was "unreliable" but he was ignored, sacked, and then discredited."....... "An IT expert has criticised the Post Office for ignoring his report which found "concerning discrepancies" in its software more than 20 years ago. Jason Coyne, who worked for Preston-based Best Practice Plc at the time, was instructed to examine the computer system called Horizon in 2003. He said he notified the Post Office the data was "unreliable" but he was ignored, sacked, and then discredited." ---------------------------- I love the way that the reporting is constantly referring to FUJITSU as a Japanese company, as if the account managers, system architects, analysts, programmers, testers, and installation engineers were not British, working for the Brirish based subsidiary that was formerly ICL, and working out of ICL's old premises. Whilst technically, on the surface this might be true, it does seem to give an unnecessarily xenophobic tinge to the affair.

At the time this was going on only 2 groups of people knew what was really happening, FUJITSU and the Post Office, and both lied to hide the truth. Anybody else peripheral to the prosecutions at the time would have been basing their judgement on their trust of these 2 ( lying ) organisations to be providing honest accounts and evidence. The CPS would have been provided the evidence for the prosecutions they undertook by the PO, who swore that it was true and accurate. On what grounds would the CPS have felt the need to query to any greater extent what they were told ?

Plasmid

Relatively minor fraud cases, I doubt it.

Being accountable and being "'involved"' are not the same thing.

Do you think the DPP is personally involved in, or even aware of, every case his Department handles ?

How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizza ? Deep pan, crisp and even.

In the HoC this evening one MP raised the interesting conspiracy theory that the PO might have used the Horizon prosecutions to expedite a program of closing sub-postoffices as a cost cutting measure. ( Under Paula Vennels the PO went from being a loss making concern to profitability ).

mitosis