Monsieur Cholet

The ICO has today found that all Brisbane Reports are protected by POL’s legal privilege & exempt from disclosure under FOI. This, despite acknowledging the public interest balance in this case to be ‘unusually close’ & public interest in disclosure to be ‘exceptionally strong’.

FUNERAL EVE INTERVIEW Louise Dar was 7 months pregnant when she faced the auditors. The day before her mother's funeral, Louise Dar was questioned. Post Office called it a formal interview, which is a lovely name for asking a grieving woman where the money went. I read Louise Dar's sworn statement to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry @PostOffInquiry. She took over the village post counter in Lenzie, near Glasgow, in November 2014. She is a mum of 3 and a former IT analyst, and before opening she asked for training on what to do when the books do not balance. She says she was fobbed off, and that a trainer told her cost cutbacks had shrunk the course from 5 days to 3. On day one, she says, auditor Margaret Guthrie suggested she had taken the £977, even though they had been together all day. Louise Dar says Margaret Guthrie had entered the stamps wrongly herself and could not find her own mistake. Her advice for future trouble was to get on with it and ring the helpline. Reassuring stuff from the person sent to check everyone else's sums. Then the audits came. In July 2015 about £10,500 was found missing and her branch shut for 6 weeks. She repaid £877 a month for 18 months. Two more audits found about £2,500 in 2016 and £6,900 in 2017. She says losses kept appearing while she was locked out of the system .... She says she paid or had deducted over £44,000. Her mother-in-law sold jewellery to help. She says her contracts manager Brian Trotter asked her several times to admit falsifying the books. Persistence like that deserves a bonus.. Her mother died suddenly in March 2017. She says Post Office summoned her to a formal interview the day before the funeral and accused her of stealing. Thoughtful scheduling, really. Her appointment ended on 27 March 2017 and she was never charged. Her mother never saw her proved right. Post Office tells it differently. It says her appointment ended for repeated failures to account for cash and stock, and for being unable to explain or repay the last shortfall. It says its investigation found falsified entries under her assistant's login and that she later accepted she was responsible for an unexplained currency gap. Its barrister put it to her in the High Court that the losses came from her or her staff's dishonesty or errors. She denied it and said the helpline once told her to change stock figures. Its barrister said that did not happen. She said it categorically did. She was one of 6 lead claimants for 555 postmasters in the High Court case against Post Office, which left her outside the Historic Shortfall Scheme. She told the Inquiry on 11 May 2022 that her payments hardly touched her debts. In January 2024 she asked Police Scotland @PoliceScotland to investigate. It said it was not investigating at that time. The government owns Post Office and the Department for Business and Trade runs the compensation, so the owner is also the claims desk. Very handy. Louise Dar asked for troubleshooting training. @PostOffice gave her the trouble.

POST OFFICE JAILED AN INNOCENT WOMAN Imagine. You run a small @PostOffice in Hull. You show up every day, you serve your community, you do the job. Then one day a computer program called Horizon decides you owe £59,000 that never existed. A computer program with a known glitch problem. Post Office didn't check the software. It just marched Janet Skinner @Janetsk20073533 into court in 2007 and got her jailed for 9 months. She served 2 behind bars. She lost her house. She lost her job. She lost her name in the eyes of her own neighbours, all because nobody in a position of power fancied questioning a machine. Here's where any decent organisation would stop digging the hole ... The Post Office kept digging. A year after she walked out of prison, they hauled her back into court again, this time chasing her for "proceeds of crime." Proceeds of a crime she never committed, calculated by a system that couldn't add up in the first place. Bold strategy from the people who broke the calculator in the first place. Less than two weeks after that fresh nightmare finally ended, Janet's body gave out completely. Neurological collapse. Paralysed from the neck down. Doctors told her she'd never walk again. She spent a year in a wheelchair and two years learning to walk. She says her own immune system turned on her. Years of fighting a system that refused to admit fault, and in the end it was her own body that surrendered first. So how does this story end? With an apology? A cheque that actually matches what she lost? Of course not. In 2025, after everything, the compensation scheme handed her an offer worth around 15% of her claim. Janet called it an insult. I'd call it a joke, except nobody's laughing, least of all the people who wrote the offer letter from the comfort of a job that still exists. 9 months in prison for a bug. 2 years in a wheelchair for the stress of proving her innocence. A payout that wouldn't cover the damage to her health, let alone her life. And somewhere, the people who signed off on her prosecution are still drawing a pension. Nobody who signed off on any of this has lost a house, a job, or a night's sleep. They got promotions. She got a wheelchair and an insulting cheque. Accountability had every chance to show up here and chose not to.. SOURCES @BBCNews @itvnews and others.

HE CONFESSED TO SAVE HIS MUM Ravinder Naga cried when a court finally cleared his name. Only 14 years late, which the @PostOffice would call express delivery.. @STVNews and @BBCScotlandNews have told this story, and @greenocktele reported the court hearing. It starts in May 2009, when Post Office auditors said about £35K was missing at his mum's branch on Belville Street in Greenock. His dad had died in 1999 aged 46, and Ravinder Naga says that shop held many of his parents' last moments together. The Post Office, ever sensitive, sent auditors. He says his mum had been quietly covering small shortfalls herself until a £35K hole landed on her. He saw panic on a face that never panics, so he told her to say it was him, to buy time. A sensible explanation never turned up, and he pleaded guilty. In early 2010 at Greenock Sheriff Court, the charges against his mum were dropped after he gave police a voluntary interview. His solicitor Jim Friel told the court he had handed over a cheque for £35K, and he got 300 hours of community service. The sheriff said he had come close to a prison cell ... He says his health slid and finding work got hard. In 2022 he asked for a review. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found that Horizon, the Post Office accounting system, supplied evidence essential to proving the shortfall, and that his plea may have been entered in circumstances that clearly worked against him. It sent the case to the appeal court in October 2023, only 13 years after the cheque. In April 2024, Brian Gill KC, the advocate depute, told the Edinburgh appeal court that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service @COPFS, Scotland's only prosecutor, was minded to oppose, and called it the most difficult Horizon appeal so far. Gerry Moynihan KC, for the Post Office, said the Post Office did not oppose. So the Post Office stayed out of the fight and the prosecutors volunteered to be difficult. On 22 August 2024 appeal judges quashed the conviction administratively. Brian Gill KC is now Solicitor General for Scotland. Congratulations on the promotion. In November 2024 Ravinder Naga told STV News he still carries the stigma. He says the Post Office ran a culture of fear, bullied his mum and everyone along the way, and now makes victims take the figure offered or beg. The Post Office is 100% state owned, so the apology and the bill leave the same pocket. It has said sorry unreservedly. His mum is tired, stressed and fully behind him. He says they took 15 years of her life, and nobody has found the counter that refunds them. Her good name stayed clean because her son gave up his.