Wednesday 17 April 2019

Accounts 3: Sterling Works

A slightly off-centre and very yellow-looking fiver
This is my third set of "accounts" for this crowdfunded project (see Talking Turkey and Money Money Money for the first two).

Most days I work on this story I charge £250 against the crowdfund pot. This covers my time and all my expenses. The majority of charging days are spent in court, though not all. If I can do the work in my own time, without charging, I do.

As of today I have received £8397 via the kickstarter campaign and £4874.79 via the paypal tip jar. Both these totals are net of the fees taken by kickstarter and paypal hence the reason they are not clean round numbers. The total sum I have therefore been entrusted with by kickstarter backers and tip jar contributors is £13,271.79

At the time of my last tally-up on 10 March 2019, I had spent £5250. Since then I have worked a further 16 days at £250, which is £4000.

So the amount of money left in the pot is:

£13,271.79 - £9250 = £4021.74

or 16 days more work.

Which is actually quite encouraging.

We have nine more days of the Horizon trial at the High Court to go, plus what I imagine will be a maximum of two days in the Court of Appeal following the appeal of the recusal application (if it is granted). Add a day for the Horizon trial judgment (which I'm not expecting until September) and we have a total of 12 days work, leaving me four non-trial days to work on this story, if I need it.

We are in good shape. I hope you think your money is being spent both carefully and productively.

The future

In the twelve months starting September 2019 there are two trials scheduled, plus likely more shenanigans at the Appeal Court. The Post Office has already expressed its intention to appeal the Common Issues judgment, and we can probably expect the Horizon trial judgment to be appealed too.

At a guess that means that from September I will need to find the money to cover between 30 and 40 court days, with, say, six non-court days to mop everything up - so up to around £11,500 all in. It is my intention to go on something of a fundraising drive once the Horizon trial judgment has been handed down. I realise it's not always possible to keep going back to the well, but once a year seems reasonable.

I expect the litigation to end up in the Supreme Court, which means there may be another fundraising drive in Sep 2020 and we're all still here reading this website in 2021.

Thanks

I am very grateful to everyone who has contributed to this project in the smallest or largest way. Your support has allowed me to put important information and documentation into the public domain, available to anyone who wants to read it for free.

For those of you who have contributed more than £20 - I hope you find the secret emails worthwhile (if you haven't signed up to the secret emails, you get them twice a day on court days and on merit on non-court days. They're quite gossipy and occasionally irreverent, but hopefully always useful).

Finally, I hope every supporter feels proud of the contribution you are making to open justice, public service journalism and a wider awareness of the plight of the Subpostmasters caught up in all this. I feel privileged to have a front row seat to it all, and I remind myself of that every day. Thank you.

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Please forward the link to anyone you think might be interested. The more people who read this blog post, the more people find out about what is the biggest litigation going through the UK courts right now.

Please also consider a donation to keep the postofficetrial.com website going by choosing an amount and clicking the button at the bottom of this post. Contributors who donate £20 or more will be added to the secret email list. Thanks!

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