Lee Castleton OBE

Ex spm and very proud of the group. I accept Dm.

[Lee Castleton OBE @CastletonLee]

Diolch.
I’m enjoying a lovely Welsh breakfast in beautiful Wales this morning.

[Welsh Cladiators @WelshCladiators]

@CastletonLee @stugoo17 Giants all - well done - still a way to go for far too many. Thank you for speaking truth to power in the face of such pressure & adversity. Truly awe inspiring. Diolch from 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

[Lee Castleton OBE @CastletonLee]

Never Give In.

[Carolyn Wright @CarolynWright19]

@CastletonLee It must be so hard for you all!

Looking forward to the day when you finally get justice!x

[isthisreallyfamilyjustice @isthisreallyfj]

@CastletonLee Here here. All state scandals and miscarriage of justice’s need the people affected to remain undeterred by anything

[Dicky Sam @Davolaar]

Paul Anthony Hewitson, a roofer from Liverpool, was born on this day in 1962.
He was 26 years old when he lost his life at Hillsborough in 1989.
RIP Paul, 🙏❤️
Never Forgotten, JFT97

[Osita Mba @DrOsitaMba]

@debrapet @CastletonLee More accurately: how lawyers facilitated a scandal for money!

[Lee Castleton OBE @CastletonLee]

💯Never Give In. X

[Sian Thomas @SianiT1971]

Through hell a back we all have been there for each other, post office never broke us, we still fight for you bro a sis, we are stronger together 💕🫶💕xxx

[Karl Flinders @Karlfl]

🚨 Hillsborough Law should cover Fujitsu & Capita bosses, say campaigners
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill will make lack of candour by public officials a criminal offence.
But campaigners want it expanded to private sector suppliers too. https://t.co/URq8GAKdSa

[Lee Castleton OBE @CastletonLee]

We were thrown together twenty years ago.
I never realised how lucky I was. X
It’s been lovely to catch up. X

[Sian Thomas @SianiT1971]

@CastletonLee we loved seeing you a Lisa this afternoon, what an amazing catch up, dad and us really appreciate it bro a sister 💕🫶💕🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿xxx

[Debra Prentice - 48/100 @debrapet]

Indefensible: how lawyers failed to stop a scandal
#postofficescandal #postofficeinquiry #Fujitsu
https://t.co/LffQjXLVvF

[Debra Prentice - 48/100 @debrapet]

Post Office chief joins high street undertaker firm -
Nick Read had to hand back a bonus he received for working on the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal
#postofficescandal #postofficeinquiry #Fujitsu
https://t.co/4vIM5okaHm

[Monsieur Cholet @stugoo17]

#PostOfficeScandal #FUJITSU
Join me and 350,000 others demanding Fujitsu is finally held to account. Sign the petition now! https://t.co/OtiOGd63eR

[Sara-Lise Howe @saralisehowe]

@JohnHyde1982 Just bought kindle version.
Can’t wait to read. Having spent more than a decade defending in RSPCA prosecutions, I know that you are entirely right in saying that the failings are not restricted to Post Office prosecutions.
https://t.co/VCGa5fKUlr

[Tim McCormack @Jusmasel2015]

#PostOfficeScandal Just started reading it and can't wait to finish it!

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

DENIS O'DONNELL HAS SENT AN OPEN LETTER ASKING FOR A MORATORIUM ON THE POST OFFICE DEADLINE

If you are reading this, please consider sharing it. This is how we actually help the victims of the Post Office scandal. Only if enough of us make noise does anyone at the top have to listen.

This is a state owned company, and this is what it did to its own postmasters and postmistresses. Time is short. Let's help them.

Denis O'Donnell spent 6 years fighting @PostOffice privately over a till defect he discovered in 2019.

Recently he took it public and formal, an open letter to Lord James Arbuthnot, copied to Post Office chair Nigel Railton and Chief Technology Officer Paul Anastassi.

I'm publishing it here in full in his own words:

=====

To: Lord James Arbuthnot,
c.c Niel Railton P.O.L. Chair, C.T.O. Paul Anastassi.

Sir, I am a former subpostmaster of forty years experience, I hold hope for generations of similar individuals past present and future.

In 2019, fully seven years ago, I discovered what Ron Warmington @RonRwarming later termed the Horizon part cash platform defect.

I have pursued this matter for all that time, even to the disregard of my own brother's life.

I ask one thing from each of you. An agreement that the wrongs of the past may finally be underlined with truth and honour. As you may be aware I have proven this issue twice beyond doubt, once to Nick Read in 2021 and secondly, together with yourselves and aided by Karl Flinders @Karlfl and Ron Warmington, to the Post Office executive.

It must be apparent to all that with today's technological enablements, lip service is no longer enough to disguise real issues, no matter how painful these may be, from the public. Therefore can we seize this opportunity to be leaders in a new future where real candour can be displayed.

In December 2025 myself and Ron asked for three measures to improve information in relation to the aforementioned defect. First, all serving staff to be made aware of the potential for error. This was achieved by internal communication, but in my experience of day to day life on the counter, that needs to be enforced with regular reminders or automatic alerts. Second, a fix for the problem. As the defect was written into the basic code after the settlement screen, this may not be remedied until the new system is established. Third, it was deemed an important matter that all legacy staff, or their survivors, should be made aware that this could potentially have caused losses they or their predecessors were convicted of or scandalised by.

This final important condition has not fully been met. The part cash defect was never alluded to within the examples shown in the Process Review redress application form, or in the information furnished.

I have been almost alone in proclaiming this matter, with the exception of those writers on LinkedIn who understood this problem following my initial contacts.

I now ask humbly, on behalf of those wronged in this way by a system defect which would have provided them no clues whatsoever to any discrepancies, that a moratorium be announced until the end of this year, in order that those people may be fully alerted. I believe this is an opportunity to reinvigorate the love for the Post Office which many have known, but which sadly has now become, for many, a distant memory of what it can be.

Denis O'Donnell, Meliden, former Subpostmaster.

======

That is a man who has spent 7 years proving he was right, asking not for revenge but for a few extra months so the people this actually happened to can find out before the door closes for good.

The Process Review closes to new applications at 11.59pm on 30 September 2026.

Denis is asking for that to become 31 December. If you were ever a subpostmaster, or you know one, read this and share it while there is still time for it to matter.

[John Hyde @JohnHyde1982]

So so grateful to everyone that helped to promote the book launch yesterday and came to the party. #postofficescandal #indefensible

[Varchasanraj V Patel @VarchasPatel]

To others, this is the #PostOfficeScandal. To us, it's our dad’s life - the years, the health and the peace he should've had. What happened to dad cannot be undone. But being heard, believed and remembered helps - and I guess in a small way it can make a victim heal a little 💙👇

[Debra Prentice - 48/100 @debrapet]

Indefensible - How Lawyers Failed to Stop the Post Office Scandal
#postofficescandal #postofficeinquiry #Fujitsu
https://t.co/wTqrcXCOj1

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

POSTMASTERS - I WANT YOUR STORY IN YOUR OWN WORDS

I have written dozens of individual stories now about postmasters and postmistresses caught up in the Post Office scandal. Different names, different branches, different towns, and somehow every one still ends the same way, a good person destroyed by a broken system with nobody at the top ever properly held to account.

I have been thinking on this idea for weeks, and instead of building it quietly on my own I want to put it out for public discussion first, so you can tell me straight if it does not work.

The idea is a fixed set of 10 to 15 questions, possibly questions that were never asked, or that never surfaced in any official account. I would love to hear what postmasters, readers, followers and subscribers all think, what questions you would want included, and whether postmasters themselves would actually have any interest in this at all.

Hundreds of postmasters and postmistresses were accused, prosecuted, bankrupted and in some cases imprisoned because Post Office Ltd trusted a broken accounting system called Horizon, built by Fujitsu, over the people who had run their branches for years. Some were cleared decades later. Some never lived to see it.

Everyone knows the headline version by now. Innocent people lost everything, a computer was wrong, nobody at the top went to prison, and the redress schemes still make people fight for money they are owed.

What is missing is the part where someone actually sits down and asks each person what happened to them, in their own words, properly, without a camera crew there for one afternoon and a deadline the next day.

It would work by email or message, answered in your own time, and published in your own words with your full approval before anything goes out. Not a five minute call for a quote. An actual record.

Some of what I would ask, just examples:

- Did Post Office investigators turn up in person demanding money on the spot.

- Did they insist on cash. Did you ever get a receipt for what you handed over.

- Were you pressured to sign something before you had a chance to read it or speak to a solicitor.

- What did losing the branch actually cost you beyond the money, your marriage, your health, your standing in a town where everyone knew your name.

And if you are reading this on behalf of someone who did not survive what was done to them, I am not asking how they died. I am asking who they were before Post Office decided they were a criminal, and what happened to them in the years after that made it impossible to keep going.

If you were a postmaster or postmistress caught up in this, or you are speaking for someone who was, send me a message or an email. If we are not already connected on Linkedin or on X @ArturNadol7566, send the connection request, it makes it easier for me to see your message.

Tell me in the comments if this makes sense to you, agree or disagree, what you think should be on the list, and what question did every journalist and every inquiry lawyer forget to ask you.

@Victoria_Rixon @MLorrM @JohnCleese @CastletonLee @SeemaMisra_OBE @VarchasPatel @stevemiddi1 @CompassnInCare

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE - POST OFFICE ROBBER

Let me tell you about Vipin Patel. He ran the post office in Horspath, a small village in Oxfordshire. In 2010 the @PostOffice) accused him of stealing money from his own branch. He hadn't. A Post Office's computer said he had, and that was apparently enough to prosecute a man.

This is one of those cases where every moral boundary got crossed. Post Office executives and the lawyers who ran these prosecutions acted like gangsters in suits, and the only fitting consequence is long prison sentences for the people who signed off on it.

The computer was Horizon, built by Fujitsu (@fujitsu_uk). It kept inventing shortfalls that were never actually missing. The Post Office knew the system was unreliable and prosecuted people, because admitting that would have cost more than ruining a few hundred lives.

Vipin sold his wife's jewellery and cashed in his Royal Mail pension trying to cover shortfalls that eventually topped £75,000. In 2011 he was convicted of fraud and given an 18 week suspended prison sentence. His business ended there and then.

Then his own village turned on him.
Someone put a sign on his shop door.

It read Wanted Dead or Alive, Post Office Robber, £10,000 reward.

In December 2020, Vipin was one of the first postmasters in the country to have his conviction quashed, at Southwark Crown Court.

10 years of his life gone, for a crime the Post Office itself invented by relying on a system it knew was broken.

That was almost 6 years ago. He is still waiting for the money that is supposed to put any of this right.

Vipin now walks with crutches. Doctors say he is likely to be paralysed. His son Varchas Patel (@VarchasPatel) has spent the past year writing to MPs Gareth Thomas (@gareththomasMP) and Blair McDougall (@blairmcdougall), asking for one simple thing.

Pay the £600K full and final settlement as an interim payment first, so his father is not forced to choose between help now and the amount he is actually owed. The family says the real figure is closer to £1M.

Even Parliament's own Business and Trade Committee, chaired by Liam Byrne (@liambyrnemp), said in June 2026 that £600K should be that interim payment. The government is still ignoring the advice of its own MPs.

This month the Public Accounts Committee (@CommonsPAC) published a report on the compensation schemes:

- 76% of victims said the claims process was distressing or retraumatising.

- 63% called it extremely difficult.

- 23% called it somewhat difficult.

- Add that up and you get almost everybody who has ever tried to claim a penny.

The Department for Business and Trade (@biztradegovuk) admitted it completely misjudged the scale of its own scandal.

It expected a few hundred claims. It got 2,417 by the first deadline, then over 10,000 more once the scheme reopened. For a government department, that counts as a rounding error.

Some claims took more than 1,395 working days to settle. The Committee says anything over 1,000 working days is unacceptable. More than half of claimants say nobody bothered to keep them updated while they waited.

Fellow victim Seema Misra OBE (@SeemaMisra_OBE), jailed while 8 weeks pregnant in 2010 and cleared in 2021, says the government found £250M for lawyers and acted like the rules did not apply to it the entire time.

Vipin Patel did not steal a single penny from anyone. The Post Office and the government that owns it have had 6 years to put this right. They have chosen delay instead.

Sources: @nickwallis @Karlfl @LBC @Guardian and many others.

[Debra Prentice - 48/100 @debrapet]

Hold Fujitsu to account for Post Office scandal
#postofficescandal #postofficeinquiry #Fujitsu
https://t.co/3naw2kieEW