Talk:British Post Office scandal

One civil case

I think there were hundreds of civil cases, but the article mentions only one -Post Office ltd v Castleton in 2006. This case could be moved into the section on Protecting the brand - or we need to add more info about other civil cases. Kiwimanic (talk) 06:11, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only relevance now of the Castleton case is that it was used to set a legal strategy in which the PO could protect, in court proceeding, horizon from being scrutinised. This is dealt with by Moorhead (the flat earther was his phrase if I remember correctly), by Exeter Lab, and by the Inquiry examination of the barrister (nice legal point was the phrase used to mock). The PO mendacity in the case is awesome; the huge legal cost (PO's) to "recover" small amount should have alerted senior management to question what was going on (loads of stuff in Inquiry past and current support that view). It set the marker to show the PO would fight any legal attack on Horizon, again well supported. Within the Scandal Castleton is the civil case equivalent of the criminal case of Misra.
The only relevance now of the Bates six cases (rightly exiled) are, the judges findings (contracts unlawful, Horizon unreliability), the improper non-disclosure, the covert plan to out-spend (improper case management, aggressive time wasting, misleading the court), The cost to the public purse of £100m defending a case known to be wrong showed that senior management and government knew and conspired. Jacksoncowes (talk) 09:26, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That reasonably summarizes things. There's a saying, "one can sue a ham sandwich", that doesn't mean we add all litigation against ham sandwiches in an article on ham sandwiches, only appropriate and concluded litigation actions and decisions. That said, I do believe that the cost to the public exceeded that £100m and as mentioned in the article, is likely to exceed £1b - plus the initial £775m in wasted funding on the failed software development, which despite being unfit for its original purpose, was repurposed for other uses for which it was utterly unfit for. In some countries, one could make a fortune selling pitchforks and torches... Wzrd1 (talk) 05:17, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With reference to the edit and moving Castleton, good stuff, but removing "Richard Morgan KC, who had designed the strategy of the Post Office case against Castleton and represented the Post Office at trial denied that he had been given instruction to establish a legal point. He said "he would have told Post Office he would not do it if those instructions had been given." wrongly implies that Dilley designed the strategy. He didn't. More importantly removing it unfairly hides Morgan's defence that he had no intention of doing what he was implicitly accused of doing. Beer's implication of ethical impropriety was made repeatedly with the phrase "nice legal point". That, together with Moorhead's comments make this a potentially serious matter for Morgan. I think that balance, point of view, etc requires that sentence to be left in.
With reference again to Bates £100m. That's just the legal fees in the Bates case. Those should have allerted the PO Board and government that the in-house lawyers were acting improperly. I believe it did and has been shown that the board knew and that government knew. That's the conspiracy. The other monies are a different part of the scandal - Post Office mendacity/opportunism.
Failure in Post Office corporate governance. Legal – court/judicial failure. Jacksoncowes (talk) 08:36, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't think this one case deserves its own heading when presumably there were hundreds of civil cases. As you say: "it was used to set a legal strategy in which the PO could protect, in court proceeding, horizon from being scrutinised." That's part of protecting the brand, so that's the heading it should be under. Kiwimanic (talk) 20:04, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree and I support the restructuring you have been doing. The phrase 'Protecting the brand' captures all(?) important aspects of the scandal - who did what when and and why. Protecting the brand is the why at the heart of the relevant things that were done by POL and its agents. The problem with using it as a section heading is that all or most of the bits that should be documented could come under that heading. Take the Marina Hyde quote. Hyse's whole article dealt with government and management mendacity, with delay, lack of media coverage and coverup. It went in the section dealing with management. You moved it to Protecting the the brand. Good move. Its not in now. Because the phrase "protecting the brand" isn't in it?.
I am trying to make two points. First is that any improper activity by POL and its agents was probably done to protect the brand, and should be somewhere in the article, (subject to all the wiki disciplines etc). But if all are marshalled under protecting the brand the section will be huge. The second point is that a style of editing that either can't or won't see relevance of material, commentary etc is damaging. What part of the multiple rational "removed lengthy quote which doesn't mention "protecting the brand" and is an opinion piece by someone with no particular expertise - too many quotes in article" is valid? To my mind the relevance is clear. The fact that it was written almost a year ago shows both its pertinence and its prescience. Referring to the Media Freedom Awards commentator of the year as it does is akin to the reference earlier on this Talk page (by a different editor) to Nick Wallis as a self publicist blowing his own trumpet. Too many quotes. What's the metric. Jacksoncowes (talk) 12:53, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Separate article on the public inquiry

User:Jmc suggested splitting out the details of the inquiry to another article. Karl Flinders has an item in today's Computer Weekly "Alan Bates and JFSA won't back down... which summarises the difficult birth of the inquiry from 2019 onwards, and the 2021 change from statutory to public. Wire723 (talk) 12:03, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree MapReader (talk) 18:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Appeals against convictions

This section should be about actual appeals and actual overturning of convictions. I have removed various opinions about this which are speculative and not really relevant to this section. Kiwimanic (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This goes to the nub of the scope of the scandal. The scope is not to be determined by POL alone. Its attempts to define the scope is an important aspect of the scandal. Having been judicially proven to have unlawfully prosecuted a huge number its legally protected place in the appeal process is being challenged. Four legal experts (not including Moorhead) went before the Justice Committee yesterday. arguing that point. The scandal is that POL flouted its obligations as a private prosecutor and unlawfully obtained a huge but as yet unknown number of unlawful convictions. The fact that our legal system demands that POL must have a place in each and every appeal against any conviction it obtained has led to the proposing legislation to bypass the appeal process. The section should primarily be about this rather than cases
This section of the article should not just be randomly selected list of successful appeals. It should address that ways in which the system was used, abused. Individual cases documented should illustrate and identify the particular aspects that show. The Wolstenholme case has some but not identified in its documentation here. Jacksoncowes (talk) 06:22, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that Casleton & Wolstenholme are civil put them under a different heading in the way the article is currently structured but the point I have tried to elucidate remains. Jacksoncowes (talk) 06:30, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Angela van den Bogerd

I'm thinking of spinning out a separate article on Angela van den Bogerd, based on the volume of RS coverage of her, specifically. Any objhections? Guy (help! - typo?) 23:43, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I assume it'd be a standard BLP article, not solely limited to her role in the BPO scandal? -- Jmc (talk) 01:18, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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