it's not often a television drama prompts a national discussion which seizes hold of the news agenda. but that's certainly been the case with mr bates versus the post office, broadcast last week on itv. it's been largely responsible for emergency laws announced by the government on wednesday, designed swiftly to exonerate and compensate victims of what's now recognised as one of the biggest miscarriages ofjustice in british history. that morning, breakfast had devoted large parts of its programme to the issue, including almost the whole hour between eightam and nine am. so, we brought together these nine victims for the first time on live tv to hear about the impact this scandal has had on their lives and what they think should happen next. claire sutherland wrote to us in praise of the programme,

but elizabeth williams thought it was given too much time. bbc breakfast editor richard frediani told us,

it wasn't just breakfast that covered the post office scandal extensively this week. that was true of most bbc outlets, and indeed the media in general. but why did it take a tv drama to bring the issue to such prominence? even one as powerful as this. tthey say money somehow gone missing from this branch, which it hasn't, and i have to pay it back, which i won't. so i say, "prove it. "prove that i'm wrong and you're right. show me the figures". but they can't or won't do that. so now they want to close me down to shut me up because they don't want everyone knowing what i know. which is? that the fancy new computer system that they've spent an arm and a leg on is faulty. chris williams emailed us to say,

"it has taken an itv drama and an anonymous viewer had the same concern. well, ifjournalism has been found wanting here, and we'll be exploring that question in a moment, there have certainly been some honourable exceptions. the story was first broken back in 2009 by the magazine computer weekly and pursued doggedly over many years by them, by private eye, the daily mail and by the bbc, amongst others. we've come across dozens of examples similar to this, postmasters who...

in 2011, nick wallis reported on the scandal on radio surrey and for bbc south. in this edition of the regional current affairs programme inside out. other bbc outlets followed that up, including panorama, the one show and file on four. nick wallis was involved in many of those programmes, including this 2022 panorama, repeated last week, and also presented a podcast series broadcast on radio four in 2020. later developed into a book called the great post office scandal. nick wallis, now a freelance journalist who was a consultant on that series, is here with me now. as you know, many people are asking, why did it take an itv drama after all these years to get this story really to everyone�*s attention? it's quite a complicated story. and in the early days, when you'd go to a busy broadcast news newsroom editor and say, "i've got a story about subpostmasters," and they say,"what�*s subpostmaster? are they employees of the post office"?

"well, no, not really. and it's notjust subpostmasters, it's post office managers". "and what's the story here"? "well, they're saying they were put in prison and they weren't guilty of any crimes, but some of them did plead guilty". and it's just quite a difficult, knotty story to tell. and whilst there was growing public awareness of how serious this story was, i think through journalism, it took something huge. it took the resources of itv to commission a drama, which isn't cheap, across prime time television at 9pm every evening on the week when no one is going out. do you think it reflects a failure in british journalism that it took the drama to draw people's attention to it fully? i think there's a very proud history of docu—dramas, dramas based on fact, and dramas based on the work ofjournalists which which have resonated with the public. cathy come home by ken loach, of course, is a famous example. jimmy mcgovern�*s hillsborough was another one as well, which resonated with the public, these dramas, but they're underpinned byjournalism. what the drama did was hit the emotional resonance of the characters lives in a way

that hasn't been seen byjournalism because there was literally nothing to film when i got hold of this story first, there was literally people who had experiences that you could interview them about and buildings that you could film. there was nothing that actually spoke in pictures of what had happened to them. so that's why the drama landed, because it's suddenly brought this to life in a way that there wasn't any documentary footage about what was going on in these people's lives before. one of the interesting things is the anger about the behaviour of people in senior positions at the post office and around them. and it's interesting, there were very few interviews over the years with anyone from the post office about the horizon it concerns as the story did begin to gather more and more coverage. is that a failure of news media, that there wasn't more work done? that is an absolute failure ofjournalism. and i've said that on the record. we consistently tried to get an interview with paula venables, and she was — don't forget, the post office is 100% owned by the government — and yet she would not make herself available for interview to talk

about any aspect of the scandal. and i don't know why more people weren't asking her that question. if serious news editors from large news organisations had gone to the government and said, "why won't the chief executive the post office give an interview to anyone"? then things might have happened. and i think actually that is one finger that you can point atjournalism. why weren't big news organisations piling in there at the very highest level and saying, "it is unacceptable that this person, this the leader of this organisation who is paid by the taxpayer, is refusing to allow herself to be held to account". now, you first worked on this, i think, for radio surrey and the bbc regional tv current affairs series inside out. inside out, of course, no longer exists. it was axed by bbc management a few years ago. bbc local radio budgets have gone down a lot. do you think it would be harder now to get this sort of investigation off the ground at the bbc? yes. it was one of the saddest moments of my career when after the radio four series went out, stories that

started to come my way. people who felt something through that radio four series wanted to tell me about their problems and their issues and their injustices in their lives. and some of these stories were really good, and i was waiting for this next series of inside outs to start so that i could start triaging these stories, and then farming them out to various regions around the country and say, "this might not be a national story, but this in your region is happening and it's really important. can we make a ten minute film about this"? and it was it was such a disappointment when the bbc canned that series and suddenly there was no or didn't appear to be much of a regional investigative function. and i think it's a crying shame that it doesn't exist in the way that it used to. interesting. a part of the public reaction has been because there is a state of the nation feel about the post office scandal. you mentioned all the people contacting you with their own experiences. it's part of the fabric of the nation. and how so many public institutions and big corporations, corporations seem to get away with treating people badly. do you think there are more stories like this? i have got a pile, a figurative pile, because they all come in as emails nowadays of, i would say, more than 100

stories of people claiming some kind of injustice, whether it's with the hmrc, whether it's in the nhs, it is usually a state—owned organisation. i think there are scandals like this all over the country. hmrc and the nhs are the ones that keep keep coming back to me. but there are many, many more and many, many areas of public life and i wish i had the capacity to go through them all to find out which are the ones that really need more investigation. but there aren't the budgets in journalism that there used to be. i mean, you go back to the 60s and the sunday times, it effectively had unlimited budgets to spend years on an investigation that might make one sunday paper. it's just not there any more. nick wallis, thank you so much. thank you, samira. thanks for having me. finally, this very chilly week has been a reminder of the importance to many news audiences of the weather forecast. thursday marked the 70th anniversary of the bbc�*s first televised forecast, and matt taylor looked back on how presentation styles have changed over the years.

george cowling was the first meteorologist to step in front of the camera and along with tom clifton, who he shared presenting duties with, brought a slightly more informal approach to the forecast. back then, the forecast came courtesy of two charts and a lot of charcoal. it wasn't until 1974, before the first female weather forecaster, barbara edwards, graced the air. if you look on the chart, you'll see there's outbreaks of rain, sleet... the following year, those instantly recognisable weather symbols that we all love were introduced, but they didn't always behave themselves. it was in 1985 when computers and green screen technology changed the landscape of weather forecasts on the bbc forever. i can tell you it's freezing here now. there's more snow forecast next week. but in the meantime, we're keen to hear your views about how the bbc covers the weather, as we'll be inviting the head of bbc weather on the programme soon. please send us all your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news, on tv, radio, online and social media.

email newswatch at bbc.co.uk, or you can find us on x, formerly known as twitter, at newswatch bbc. you can call us on 0370106676, and do have a look at previous interviews on our website, bbc.co.uk newswatch. that's all from us for now. thank you forjoining us. and do you think about getting in touch and perhaps even coming on the programme? we'll be back to hear more of your thoughts about how the bbc covers the news next week. goodbye. this is news, we would have the headlines for you the top of the hour straight after this programme.

scooters. they're lean, nifty, greener than cars — really green if they're electric. but there's one thing about them that could still be greener — the way they're made and what they're made from. this is stilride one. it has one very unusual feature. its chassis is made

from one piece of steel. all the curves, all the lines have been folded like origami, following a design by its creator tue beijer. the reason is notjust about aesthetics. see, a typical scooter is assembled in special factories from more than 100 parts, and then it's shipped around the world. but for this bike, all that would need to be sent anywhere is the design. because a bike, if you would send a bike in a crate, you're shipping air. you don't want to ship air. whether you're in sweden, you're in england, you'll probably find sheet metal, right? so it's better to send the code rather than to send yourfinal product. that's a very, very efficient way to do it, you know? so you want to produce near the end customer. i've been given permission to fire the laser.

the plan is for locally—sourced steel to be laser—cut into a flat chassis pattern and then for robots to bend it into the right shape like these ones are currently doing for other simpler objects. all in all, there are 15 components, including a saddle that also starts life flat. and once it's all been folded up, it comes here to be welded. and it looks like this. while the design is still being perfected, the prototypes are bent manually. the curved folds in particular are hard to get your head around. stilride has developed its own software to calculate how to get the shapes that they need with help from a hand—cranked folding machine — back at the office, that is. but i know what you're thinking. without all those bolts and screws and separate supports, can a folded piece of metal be

strong enough to ride around on? if you put a straight fold into a material, it doesn't become that strong because even if you lock one side of the fold, it can carry on bending, like that. but if you put a curved fold into a material, then as you change the shape on one side of the fold, it forces the other side into a particular shape, too. and that means, if you lock this side into position, the whole structure becomes rigid. the best example i've seen of that is your french fries container, which is pretty flimsy when you're only using the straight folds on the edge, but there are two curved folds on the bottom, and if you engage those, the whole thing locks into place and your chips don't fall out. the bike that we created now, or the chassis that we've done for the stilride one, compared to a competitor bike, it's a tubular frame, a typical scooter. we created a chassis that's even 50 times stronger or more stiff, rigid than the tubular frame.