Sunak must end the endless heartbreak of 700 wrongly accused Post Office managers

I mentioned in my rant about Boris Johnson at the beginning of the week that Covid PPE was an enormous scandal. It certainly is and we can only hope that Michelle Mone and the Friends of Hancock who made so much money from the misery of the country will all end up in jail. (And just for good measure let’s include the man himself who posed as health secretary.)

But the worst scandal this century, in terms of sheer injustice and the suffering of decent, hard working, innocent people, is the Post Office computer debacle.

It is 23 years since Fujitsu, the Japanese IT giant (incompetent as it turned out) trousered £16 million, plus a further £42 million later, to convert the running of Britain’s post offices to its Horizon IT system. When, almost instantly, it started to go badly wrong and end-of-the-day takings wouldn’t tally, it wasn’t Fujitsu which was accused, it was thousands of honest, diligent families who were charged with cooking the books.

We are all familiar with the sort of people who run our local post offices; the majority are of Asian heritage who take pride in building up these small businesses. It’s not just letters and parcels, stamps, postal orders and pensions, but many of the shops sell groceries and medicines and are a vital part of any community.

Indeed they are run by the very people Rishi Sunak should know better than most; immigrants like his parents who succeeded here and who proudly give their children every possible chance. Maybe even to become prime minister.

So why isn’t he moving heaven and earth to end the heartbreak still being suffered by the 700 postmasters and postmistresses who were wrongly prosecuted? Scores went to jail, all were forced to pay back money they had been  accused of stealing, all were forbidden from keeping their livelihoods and inevitably many were bankrupted.        

As a result four committed suicide and marriages and families broke up. It is recognised as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.

But guess what? Despite more that £1 billion being set aside to compensate the victims of this scandal, hundreds are still waiting to be paid. Its our old friend ‘legal wrangling’ which is holding up the payments. The law wasn’t so slow when courts sent the innocent to prison.

Now it is revealed that 59 of the wrongly accused have died before receiving that compensation. Those still alive are having to fight for fairness, some of them forced to settle for less than is their due because of their financial straits.

The Post Office was owned by the Department of Trade and Industry, now renamed Business and Trade. There can be no excuse: the prime minister should summon that other offspring of immigrants who has done rather well and tell Kemi Badenoch to cut through the legal hurdles and pay these innocent, decent people every penny they are owed. Immediately.

 *****

 When it comes to the monarchy I am an atheist at best but I do applaud the King for making next week’s Coronation the first not to belong solely to those who have benefited from an accident of birth, in other words those listed in Burke’s Peerage.

Those at the Abbey will be from much wider, more representative backgrounds including the deputy leader of Sinn Fein, Michelle O’Neill. She has accepted warmly, saying she realises that as the elected First Minister of Northern Ireland (though unable to sit thanks to the wretched DUP) she represents all strands and faiths of society. She knows too that however much she wants a united Ireland, the most important factor in the meantime is peace. Predictably the Daily Mail is outraged. Result!

On a personal note I am proud that Charles chose a group of girl choristers from the chapel choir of my old school Methodist College to sing at the service. It was his decision and his alone I am assured. I have heard the chapel choir on numerous occasions, including when they have done a regular week long summer stint at Evensong at the Abbey. The old boy is clearly a man of taste.

Johnson is quite unfit to be a normal human being let alone Prime Minister

By ALAN FRAME

So now we know, as if there was any doubt: Boris Johnson’s government was a total shambles. Led by a power mad, lying narcissist who couldn’t make a decision for fear of making him unpopular and with an advisor who was clearly barking and who tried to sack everyone he didn’t like. Which was indeed everyone. We are talking of Dominic Cummings, that strange fellow who made a 40-mile round trip to see if he could see the road ahead.

However much we thought we knew about Partygate , the ridiculous gold wallpaper and the sponging from more-money-than-sense creepy friends, the full scale of the chaos is now laid bare in a brilliant new book by that prolific political biographer Anthony Seldon with Raymond Newell. It’s called Johnson at 10: the Inside Story. One wonders if the title refers not to the address but to the behavioural age of most of its inhabitants.

Events were not helped by having such a weak cabinet secretary in Simon Case who, when challenged to do more to control Johnson and cohorts like Patel, Truss and Squire Mogg, said: ‘I don’t know what more I can do to stand up to a prime minister who lies.’

It came as no surprise to learn that Trump saw his fellow liar as a ‘mini-me.’ Some compliment! More normal US politicians got the picture; John Kerry summed up Johnson, then a disastrous foreign secretary (ask Nazanin) as ‘incomprehensible, baffling, very, very public school, trying to be funny, starting down one track then changing to another’.

For his part Johnson talked of Trump’s ‘exciting vision for change’ and Satsuma Man replied: ‘We’ve got the world by the balls.’ In full obsequious mode his pal in No10 told Trump: ‘People really love you in the UK,’  further proof that for all his alleged populism, Johnson had no idea what normal, decent people here thought about Trump and his retinue of fake news merchants.

It is the day-to-day chaos in Downing St that is most disturbing. Everyone was frightened including Johnson himself. He feared most of all ‘the prospect of those two fuckers (Cameron and Osborne) watching him fail.’ The language hit new lows;  critics were dismissed as c***s and ‘utter c***s and the prime minister included the then editor of the Sunday Times, Emma Tucker, in the latter category after the paper published a disobliging story about him. When it became clear she had heard of his view, Johnson called her to apologise in person.

The only heartening revelation out of all this is that Johnson (as did the rest of his ministers and battalion of advisors) regarded Matt Hancock as an idiot who lied his head off about PPE (the greatest scandal of Covid) to Cabinet. Johnson called him ‘totally fucking hopeless’ but kept him on so that he would be the fall guy in a post-Covid enquiry. 

Seldon and Newell’s book is truly shocking, however aware and cynical you thought you were about politicians. Johnson is unfit to be a normal human being, let alone prime minister. Or to quote both him and Paul Dacre, ‘an utter c**t.’

 *****

 While on the subject of weird politicians, I do hope we can see the last of Diane Abbott. We all know she has a problem with maths but to categorise antisemitism as lower in the scale of hate than racism against non-white people is sheer ignorance.

I researched with growing horror the Nazi doctrine and its appalling legacy for my book on Toto Koopman, the former mistress of Beaverbrook who became an incredibly brave British spy working with the Italian Resistance and ending the war in Ravensbruck concentration camp

All racism and sectarianism is wrong, wrong, wrong and is usually born of stupidity. The fact that a black woman MP who has form with antisemitism and still knows no better is proof it really is time for her to go quietly. But don’t hold your breath.

 *****

Barry Humphries will probably be remembered best for his alter ego Dame Edna but for me his greatest creation was Sir Les Patterson, cultural attaché complete with trouser snake.

Many years ago I made the mistake of booking seats in the second row at one his shows. I should have worn a sou’wester and brought an umbrella such was the shower of spittle that rained down from the stage. But it didn’t take away from the brilliance of the performance. RIP Les... 

Why on earth did the BBC think it a good idea to suspend Gary Lineker?

I care little for football and less for football pundits. Worst of the lot are the amateur, know-it-all pundits who bore the pants off you throughout the day after a game (those attending morning conferences at the Express will know who they are, Mr Parry.)

As for Twitter, why? Life is too short, especially at the age of most Drone contributors, to read what someone you’ve never heard of thinks, if that’s the right word, about, well, anything really.

But I do care about free speech and although Gary Lineker was way over the top in his use of language when tweeting about my old friend Baroness Braverman of Rwanda, the BBC really has lost the plot.

So that you don’t have to, I’ve looked at the guidelines in the corporation’s charter and the relevant section on the impartiality of its staff, Section 4.3 point 20, states ‘BBC staff and regular BBC presenters and reporters associated with news or public policy related…may not normally present or write personal views on political policy or political controversy.’

Note ‘associated with news or public policy.’ That’s why Huw Edwards, the brilliant Fiona Bruce or Nick Robinson never expresses a view on the great issues they are dealing with on a daily basis in their programmes. They are news presenters and reporters whose job it is to interrogate politicians who claim to know better than us.

Gary Lineker is not. He is a remarkably well paid former footballer, crisp salesman and soccer pundit. He is a grammar school boy who seems to have a point of view on a variety of issues, many of which are relevant to most people which is more than can be said for the majority of Twitter views. Indeed he seems to have a social conscience.

So why on earth did the BBC think it a good idea to suspend him? Surely anyone with half a brain must have known that it would result in a mass exodus by his colleagues in the footie department which is exactly what has happened. 

The Saturday edition of the Today programme must have come as a shock to those on the top floor. First Greg Dyke, a former director-general, was predictable enough in decrying the decision but then Baroness Wheatcroft, the former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, married to a former Tory election campaigner and not known for her Leftie views, delivered another blow, attacking not just the suspension but the language, not of Lineker but of Braverman. Indeed  she didn’t hold back on what she thought about the government’s latest Stop the Boats policy. I assume her inclusion on the show was to give a balance . The hierarchy must have been bitterly disappointed.

It’s a total shambles. Why for instance was the ghastly Lord Sugar (not as nice as he looks) not sanctioned when tweeting about the rail strikes? Of course what makes the situation so much worse is not just the management’s stupidity but because it comes at a time when the chairman of the BBC Richard Sharp, a big time Tory donor and fixer for Boris Johnson is still in his job. 

So much for impartiality.

*****

Elsewhere in this great organ is mention of Yates’ Wine Lodge opposite the Express building in Manchester. When I was on the DX in the North in the late Sixties it was one of the very few establishments which didn’t enjoy my patronage simply because of its reputation as a bit of a dive.

One evening while on a break in the rather more respectable Land o’ Cakes, just a few staggers from the wine lodge, I saw just why I had been wise to keep well away. A chap, clearly the worse for wear in every respect, staggered in and asked for a brandy. Just as he was being refused he fell, face down and cutting a swathe between Messrs McDonald and Hodgson, editor and night editor respectively.

Sticking out of the poor man’s back was a knife following a clash of opinions in Yates’. An ambulance was duly summonsed and John McDonald resumed his conversation thus: ‘As I was saying before we were interrupted.’ 

Turnip gratin butters no parsnips with me

What is it with these Tory wimmin? Cigar aficionado Thérèse Coffey states the obvious that we should be eating seasonal vegetables (delicious and nutritious) including turnip (wrong choice matron). There are so many great varieties of cabbage and carrots and I bow to no man in my appreciation of the honey roasted parsnip. 

But turnips, no. There’s a reason why it doesn’t feature in the great cuisines of Italy and India and only marginally in French cooking (turnip gratin anyone?) It’s too school dinners and memories of lunches with great aunts who couldn’t cook but had an uncanny resemblance in look and size to Coffey. She’s like one of those people whose primary function is to annoy.

The other great bête noir is of course Suella, Baroness Braverman of Rwanda, whose demise I forecasted in these pages as regular Drone readers never tire of reminding me. Well it may still come to pass because she’s finding it hard to find a safe seat to fight for the next general election following boundary changes. She has put herself forward for the Fareham and Waterlooville constituency where the selection panel don’t much like the cut of her jib, preferring a female candidate who looks normal, warm and actually smiles.

It’s sobering to remember that Braverman is Home Secretary and that Coffey was Deputy Prime Minister to that other great woman Liz Truss.

Meanwhile poor Rishi is trying to do the impossible and sort out the Northern Ireland Protocol imbroglio, the architect of which was Boris Johnson. Only purpose in life: to further his own nasty aims and lay waste to everything else. Sunak, a decent man, is on a hiding to nothing with Johnson leading a satanic coalition of Rees-Mogg, arch Brexiteers and far right Unionists. In other words: JRM, ERG and DUP. So here’s another of my Mystic Meg predictions: even if a deal is reached — unlikely — the DUP will then find another reason not to return to Stormont as the second party to Sinn Fein. Hopefully it will be their undoing.

*****

The death at 90 of Bernard Ingham, late of this parish, was a reminder of the days when politics was not run by teenagers who had never had a job outside Westminster. He was a successful journalist who had learned the hard way: Grammar school, Hebden Bridge Times (pre Happy Valley of course), Yorkshire Evening Post and the Grauniad. A Labour Party member to his bushy eyebrows who adored Mrs Thatcher.

When she finally left Downing St in 1990 I suggested to Nick Lloyd that we should give him a weekly column. It was a great success and he was still writing a column for the Yorkshire Post until a month ago. He was a decent man just like his only son John, also late of this parish (Daily Express defence corr and award winning environment corr) of whom Bernard was rightly proud.

*****

And talking of much missed colleagues, Jim Davies was as good a reporter and friend as we could have wished for. John Ingham (the very same) writes elsewhere on the Drone that Jim and other hacks were caught in the middle of a stand off between the British army and the IRA during the worst of times in Derry. 

In fact, Jim told me just what peril he had been facing: He was picked up by a group of Provos intent on treating him as a spy with the obvious ending. As he was being shovelled into a car to face the inevitable a boyish looking Provisional approached the group and asked what was going on. “What?” came to reply, “He’s no spy, he’s Jim Davies of the Daily Express and I know him well. Let him go.”

Jim’s guardian angel? Martin McGuinness.