'The Great Post Office Trial'

Dear Nick

You are doing a brilliant job in exposing this scandal.  My wife and I have just listened to Parts 13 - 17 on BBC Sounds.  It must easily be "the widest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history."  Very well done, indeed.

When you have well and truly done with the Horizon scandal, I would still love your help with what I have discovered by officers, members and senior management teams in local and regional government in the West Midlands where I live.  Some examples,

• Mayor Andy Street ordered a supposed independent review into Metro trams in 2021, I believe was the year.  It has still not been published.
• Concerns arose over delays, premature replacement of railway track in the heart of the shopping centre of Brum and budget overspends.
• The Wolverhampton Pipers Row tram extension took seven years of work on the ground to build 700 m of tram track!
• In 20 years, Centenary Sq has seen three major building, demolition and rebuilding projects.
• There appears to be a far too cosy a relationship between the auditor, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) and the Combined Authority (WMCA).​
   How the Nolan Principles are applied by the WMCA
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• PWC staff seem to get on so well with WMCA officers that there is little wonder that over-spending caused three transport projects to be suspended in the spring/summer of 2022.
• One was the enormous new University Station in Edgbaston that is still not open.
• A second was Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE) tram aka the Dudley Tram was suspended and split into four phases because of a 45% increase in the overall budget.  Work on the ground started in 2019 for this 11 Kms on mainly a former principal mainline railway​
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
  ​The return of freight and passenger trains to the two former mainline railways would have been at a fraction of the price.
• The 1.7 Kms Birmingham Eastside extension has gone up in price to £245 m and cannot be completed until 2027, at the earliest because of HS2 Ltd constructing Curzon St Station.  Why was there no liaison between the tram builders and the Curzon St builders to decide on a sensible, competent programme timetable?  Now a whopping £144 m/Km that perhaps includes public realm 'improvements'.
• COMPARE WITH Second Edinburgh tram project:

• “The Trams to Newhaven project remains on schedule for completion by spring 2023 and within the £207.3m budget.” (March 2023 from UK Tram Ltd)  8 new stops.

  £207.3 m divided by 4.69 Kms length = £44.2 m/Km

WHY THE DISPARITY BETWEEN £144 m/Km for Brum and £44.2 m/Km for Edinburgh - both for tram projects and both this year, 2023? Over 3x more for Brum to construct trams than Edinburgh!​

 The Conservative Group on Edinburgh City Counci...

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​Nick, do you have the contact details for Max Caller, the man appointed to look into Bankrupt Brum and turn it around, a few weeks ago, please?

​Thanks so much for standing up to get justice for the hundreds of postmasters (over 700!).  Keep up the truly magnificent work, please.  Don't help me until you have finished with the Post Office folly, idiocy, incompetence and scandal.

Is there anyone else like you, that I could try, Nick?  'Private Eye' and, even their Dr B Ching, has never shown any interest over the years.

Best wishes

THESE TWO MEN ARE HEROES

Dear Nick - Nick Wallis and Alan Bates are the two heroes

My wife and I have just watched your Panorama film and heard all ten programmes on Radio 4.  We think the top people in the Post Office who lied, covered up, were thoroughly dishonest and dishonourable should all be prosecuted.  When found guilty of abuse of power and incompetence and illegality, don't send them to prison but have them pay large amounts from their immoral earnings to each postmaster who was wrongly prosecuted, indeed persecuted by them.  An average of £20,000 each is not nearly enough for what they have been through.

Now, my national scandal rivals your truly Great Post Office Scandal!  But you do deserve a good long rest.  Anyway, see what you think.  If you can help me, too it would be superb, Nick.

THE GREAT 50-YEAR-OLD SCANDAL OF RAILWAY LOSSES, AS SEVEN TRAM SCHEMES HAVE GAINED FROM THE IDIOCY

1. This scandal lies in the number of casualties from tram accidents.  Croydon in November 2016:-  This morning, I discovered this when I studied the Ordnance Survey map online.  The north-south disused railway to the east of Sandilands tram stop was used for the tram.  The sharp curve  (called Sandilands Junction) was created to take trams on and off the railway line.  If the commuter trains had been put back, with the money saved used for electric buses linking to train arrivals and departures, seven people would still be alive today.  Some of that railway line is still wasted to this day.
2. Railway lines destroyed for buildings of every kind, for roads and garden/landscape schemes.
3. Railway lines taken over by trams and then the lines not used for the trams are then unused, wasted and lost forever.
4. This has resulted in worse road congestion and train overcrowding as railway passenger numbers have doubled over the last 25 years.
5. As a result, more finite fossil fuels burnt and greenhouse gases emitted.
6. That is the exact opposite direction that they must go in for us all to build a safer world that will sustain life on earth.
7. Business costs are adding up to many billions of pounds from added congestion that could have been relieved if this transport infrastructure had been used instead of lost, obliterated, permanently.
8. 40 years of tram networks being rebuilt has meant that those seven authorities that have gone for trams have given a much lower priority to reopening train lines for trains.
9. 60 years of railway lines being bulldozed or built on is a most serious scandal.
10. This is a nationwide problem of waste of good transport infrastructure, of injuries and death from accidents and, wrong priorities.
11. 24 railway schemes remain for finishing, improvement, modernising here.  Page 16 is my preoccupation:
    
     TPA Gt British Transport Competition p 16

The Shameful Seven:

Manchester Metrolink

Sheffield Supertram

Blackpool Trams

Nottingham Express Tram

West Midlands Tram

Croydon Tramlink

Edinburgh Trams

FROM THE CROYDON TRAMLINK TRAGEDY of Nov 2016:

WIKIPEDIA'S QUOTES:

"Of a total sixty-nine passengers, there were seven fatalities and sixty-two injured, nineteen of whom sustained serious injuries."

"Driver error was found to be the cause of the accident.^[3]"

^"Regulations applying to trams were similar to those applying to buses."

^"The investigation also found that trams were not as safe as the ORR previously thought, having a higher accident rate than other rail transport and also buses and coaches.^[43]"   Wikipedia

MORE ASTONISHING BEHAVIOUR FROM PEOPLE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER! - 

Throughout the post-war decades, both the railway trade unions and the railway lobbying groups have fully co-operated with the authorities and transport planners, nationwide in this:

Thinking that there was no further use of railway lines when the bosses and politicians, NOT Richard Beeching, decided to close and permanently finish with the lines Beeching only closed in the 1960s.

Best wishes