In November last year, alongside a fine young journalist called Tim Robinson, I pitched a story to The One Show, to be produced by the excellent team at Inside Out South. The One Show liked the story, commissioned it and said I could present it. It was scheduled to go out over two parts in January but events changed and both parts went out in December.
The One Show were pleased with what we did and asked me to present a couple more films. After that they offered me a contract. Whilst we were sorting out a contract they continued to put work my way. I signed the contract towards the end of March.
Sorry it's taken so long to mention this on this blog, but now you know. Obviously I am delighted to be part of the team.
You can always tell when I haven't got much work on. I'll be banging out one of these. So ten months after my last Top Ten album, here is another:
This record brought The Cult to the attention of Rick Rubin and sparked their ill-advised American heavy rock adventure. Two decades after its release Love merited being performed in its entirety, track by track, on a special tour. It's a good album. But let's deal with the downsides first:
Nick Cave apart, I seem drawn to appalling lyricists. Singer Ian Astbury is one of them. But you don't notice at first. Unlike Electric, the terrible follow-up, Love is so immersed in batshit symbolism and dazzling guitar-work, you are distracted from how bad a writer Astbury really is.
But, as appears to be a consistent theme in this Top Ten Albums series, when I first heard it I was 14 and didn't care. Love is a monster.
l-r Ian Astbury, Jamie Stewart, Billy Duffy
She Sells Sanctuary, tucked away as the second-to-last track, is the greatest goth rock anthem ever written. Billy Duffy's ludicrously accomplished guitar playing goes jangly poppy, muscles out a catchy little riff and we're away. Astbury has an affecting voice and his vocal tics serve him well. It's a great song. It reached number 15 in 1985 and in the nineties soundtracked a tampon advert, as well as every indie disco in the country for twenty years.
Nothing else here quite reaches She Sells Sanctuary's poppy heights - yet... almost every other track nearly does. In the old days it was quite common to buy an album on the strength of a stand-out single and spend a depressing 45 minutes becoming progressively disappointed with how much pocket money you have just wasted on a duff bet. Love does not disappoint.
The opener - Love - is solid. Astbury wailing about god knows what and Billy Duffy just tearing. shit. up. Essentially this is the band saying "We're good. We're really good. We can do this sort of thing standing on our heads."
Bearing in mind musicianship wasn't something the dark hordes of post-punk goth/indie ne'er do wells cared for, this band ticked all the aesthetic boxes, yet could evidently play. Made a nice change.
Second up is Big Neon Glitter. The title contains a reference to the "Glitter Beat", a drum rhythm popularised by the paedophile glam-rocker Gary Glitter (and most recently heard on Kanye West's opus Black Skinhead). The Glitter beat drives the track through a range of guitar and vocal sonics, perfectly produced.
Then comes the big rush: Nirvana. Aproper singalongagoth anthem, which is still only the second best song on the A side and the fourth best song on the album.
"Goooooorrraaayeyaaahhh!" appears to be the opening line. The chorus? "Yeeeeeveryyyyday. Nirvana! Ooooowweeeessisssbrayy, yeah yeah yeah." Find it, try it, turn it up loud, and soon you too will be singing like Ian Astbury.
The next song, Rain, is a belter. Inadvertent Spinal Tap references notwithstanding ("Hot sticky scenes/You know what I mean..."), it's the track which comes along when you're thinking....
"This album more than alright. I've just heard three cracking numbers and we haven't even got to She Sells Sanctuary yet! Bargain!"
... and proceeds to blow you away. If I had one wish in life it would be to be able to play guitar like Billy Duffy. Or Johnny Marr. But for the purposes of this post, Billy Duffy. It's not just about songwriting or technical ability, it's about a sense of what you are doing within the song and in relation to the other musicians playing it. Duffy does it so well that when Astbury first heard him play he immediately sacked his band so he could build the rest of his career around the mad Manc axe-man. And he did.
I'm not going to go on about the second side of Love - listen to it yourself. Phoenix is awful. Hollow Man is cracking. SSS is amazing, Revolution is lovely and Brother Wolf, Sister Moon is a ballad, compulsory on every goth album in those strange, far-off days.
This is Scott Darlington. He is a former Subpostmaster.
Scott contacted me recently to express frustration at his situation and the situation of many subpostmasters who have been criminalised due to their involvement with the Post Office.
Most of the recent posts on this blog have been concerned with the process of the subpostmasters' campaign to persuade the powers-that-be that miscarriages of justice may have taken place. This post is one person's story, in his own words, edited and published with his agreement.
It's easy to forget, and the Post Office would very much like you to forget, there are people whose lives (and certainly careers) have been ruined by what happened to them. The Post Office would have that a good number of these people are culpable, and admitted as much in a court of law.
The Post Office is not interested in the idea that many of the subpostmasters who false accounted and pleaded guilty claim they did so because of the nightmarish environment they found themselves in. The Post Office has already exonerated itself of any blame, so we know it's done nothing wrong.
Here's Scott's story. Judge for yourself.
"Hi Nick
I messaged you on Facebook and you asked that I email you regarding my situation re Post Office mediation*.
I will try and keep it as short as I can.
My problems started in 2008-2009. After 4 years of no discrepancy problems at my branch, in Feb 2008 one appeared on the Horizonsystem for £1700 saying I had a shortage of stamps to that value.
When I reported it to the helpline, I was told unless I can prove it's not my fault I would have to pay.POL [Post Office Ltd] subsequently took 2 lots of £850 out of my remuneration.
Later in the same year, large discrepancies started to appear in my system, starting with approximately £9,000.
I knew that POL would immediately want this 'missing' money back so I didn’t tell them about it, whilst myself and a colleague trieddesperately to get to the bottom of it.
As you know, we have almost no access to the Horizon system. All we could do was scrutinise all the transactions we had records of totry and see if there was anything that could have caused it.
We couldn’t find anything. In the meantime over the next 3 months the discrepancy rocketedto £44,000!
An auditor arrived at my branch and I was suspended. Shortly afterwards my contract was terminated and I was prosecuted (withoutCPS involvement).
On the advice of my barrister I had to plead guilty to false accounting. I was given a 3 month suspended prison sentence suspendedfor 12 months, plus 110 hours community service.
Since then I struggled for 3 years to get any sort of employment due to this conviction.
Here is where I am now:
My case was looked at by 2nd Sight* and I was recommended for mediation. I have waited over a year for this outcome. I now knowthat it was POL's default position not to mediate with cases that pleaded guilty to false accounting. I only found this out last week.
I have been offered a meeting with POL and my MP without seeing 2nd Sight's final report first.
Clearly this is not going to result in any kind of settlement.
I presume you have read the letter sent to Vince Cable today regarding the select committee meeting a few weeks ago. It is woeful.
The recommendations are basically saying "carry on as you are, but try to be a bit better."
We had hoped and were led to believe that POL were going to be removed from controlling the mediation process.
Its difficult to see a way forward after this. After all, they were slated at the select committee* andthey came across very badly i'm sure you agree.
Unless we can get insurance cover it is impossible to go down the route of litigation.
All in all a very depressing time.
Congrats on your job with the One Show.
cheers,
Scott"
According to the court report in the Manchester Evening News, the judge in Scott's case appeared to speculate there might have been something wrong with Horizon, the Post Office computer system, rather than any criminal intent on Scott's part.
The MEN write-up also added this:
"Mr Darlington’s solicitor, John Temperley of The Oakes Partnership, Macclesfield, said: "At no stage in the proceedings did Royal Mail" [sic] "provide any evidence to suggest that Scott had actuallyreceived any money to which he was not entitled. Scott was not charged with theft for that veryreason.
“No explanation was given as to why the POCA [Proceeds of Crime Act] application was withdrawn. However, theimplication was that they had to accept the representations made by Scott's barrister, to theeffect that in order to succeed in confiscation proceedings they would have to show that Scotthad actually obtained the money that was the subject of the false accounting charges. Put bluntly they were totally unable to do so."
*For more details on the Post Office Horizon story, this link will point you in the right direction.
I'm not usually in the business of suggesting you ignore the democratic process, but on this occasion... Channel 5 have decided the best way of dealing with ITV's political debate tonight is to give me a double bill of programmes. At 8pm they're screening a repeat of one of the best episodes of Caught On Camera - Gangs and Guns - then at 9pm the first showing of a documentary I made last year called Glasgow's Killing Streets. The programme was originally commissioned as part of a series of four called Britain's Crime Capitals, but this episode has a very different atmosphere. Someone sensibly decided to hold it back and spin it out under a different brand. Making Glasgow's Killing Streets was an eye-opening process, not least interviewing a forensic pathologist over a mortuary table in the state of the art facility at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Want to know one of the tools involved in cutting open someone's sternum? A bread knife. If you get bored with what's going on elsewhere and want to watch two absorbing (and in the latter's case, surprisingly uplifting) programmes you know what to do. Vote Wallis. .
If you don't already, have a think about subscribing to Private Eye. It publishes proper, serious investigative journalism, and the cartoons are occasionally funny.
"I have sufficient cause for concern having looked at material that I have been provided that innocent people might have been wrongly convicted." says Sandip Patel QC.
"Speculation" says the Post Office.
If you want to hear what a contract lawyer has to say about the Subpostmaster contract, what a professor of fraud studies has to say about the Post Office's investigation function, why an MP thinks the Post Office has spent millions of pounds on a "sham" scheme and how dozens of people have been sacked, bankrupted and prosecuted after trouble with the Post Office IT system, please do have a watch of Inside Out tonight.
You can watch it as it goes out at 7.30pm across the UK on BBC1HD.
It will also be on BBC1 South, West, East Midlands, West Midlands and North East and Cumbria, and you can, of course, watch it shortly after transmission on BBC iPlayer.
It was commissioned internally as an Inside Out South production and broadcast on Tuesday 9 Dec 2014. It is about the Post Office Horizon computer system, a story I have been following for some time. If you are interested in that sort of thing, or just want to see me sitting on a sofa next to John Cleese, please watch it. The film below is a follow up piece, broadcast on Wednesday 17 Dec 2014. It moves the story on and widens it out. The broadcast was timed to coincide with an adjournment debate on the Post Office at Westminster Hall, and I was able to incorporate what happened at the debate into my sofa chat (where I got to sit alongside Greg Davies, Michael Ball and Victoria Wood).
If you have never come across this story before these two short films are as good a starting point as any. If you can't watch video - I'd thoroughly recommend clicking on the link directly below - a full transcript of James Arbuthnot MP's adjournment debate on the Post Office Horizon system and mediation scheme. *********************
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