Joshi Herrmann

🚨 Sacha Lord has resigned as an advisor to Andy Burnham after the Arts Council found that his company should repay the grant it got during the pandemic. Lord threatened to sue @ManchesterMill for revealing this story. Burnham says he accepted Lord's resignation last night.

@brumdispatch There will very likely be another big update in this story tomorrow - keep your eyes on @brumdispatch.

@brumdispatch I think the whole thing hangs on whether you buy this.

If you decide to sign two critical election forms this differently, you ideally do not want them blown up on page 2 of the Daily Mail.

@Familyislife74 @brumdispatch Haha true

@joshi @brumdispatch She's ThreeSigs!!! Look at her signature now!!!! The writing is not even vaguely similar 🤣🤣🤣

@Urcrazytoo1000 No I know her spokesperson is saying that. He might be right but we haven’t found any evidence of that. It’s not in the very lengthy judgement.

@joshi It's there in the article. The screenshot you posted.

@Urcrazytoo1000 We’ve yet to see any evidence of that.

@joshi A court appointed handwriting expert said these signatures were made by the same hand. Why do others think they know better?

@Tall_Rosey @flygirlie30 Yep, that was part of the same scandal. There was a trial for 3 cllrs in Aston and 3 in Bordesley Green. Shabana Mahmood's father was the election agent for the 3 in Bordesley Green.

Curious to see Shabana Mahmood's spokesperson tell the @DailyMail that her father Mahmood Ahmed "is no longer involved in local politics"...

@hulmeroberts @brumdispatch These are supposed to be two different people completing two different forms. So both are relevant to the analysis.

@joshi @brumdispatch A date isn't a signature

New twist in the Shabana Mahmood voting story. Yesterday @brumdispatch revealed that Mahmood signed two postal ballot documents in 2004 with very different signatures. Now look at one of those SM signatures alongside one from her sister. And look at the dates. The same hand?

@EugeneJ89312567 Have I spent too much time reading AI analysis of handwriting in the past 24 hours? Yes, sure.

@EugeneJ89312567 I think her public signature looks quite a lot like the one on the application (top one). It’s a public signature and it’s 20 years on, but the "M" in Mahmood is formed with very similar sharp, peaked strokes, and the "h" has a distinct, rounded loop on the ascender.

@nmsonline @brumdispatch Magically emerged via @pennycenturyy’s 🖊️

@joshi @brumdispatch “it emerged” did it now

@jonoland11 Yeah I think they missed it by two working days because of the bank holiday that year.

@joshi My thinking was that since both Mahmood & sister's applications were made on 19 April that must have been a couple days before the deadline. This year the deadline was 21 April for a 7 May election, so you're probably right that they missed the 2003 one.

@hulmeroberts @brumdispatch How about the dates?

@joshi @brumdispatch I'm no expert but no

@Richardbishop Yeah I’m unsure - does her official one look a bit like signature one?

@joshi Neither of these looks like her current signature on published letters.

@pennycenturyy @brumdispatch If you haven’t read it yet, check out @pennycenturyy’s incredible scoop published on Saturday - featuring insane legal threats from Mahmood’s special advisor. This one is free but join @brumdispatch as a paying member to read Part 2 and back our work. birminghamdispatch.co.uk/exclusive-shab…

@pennycenturyy @brumdispatch Boom 🚨🚨 the first mainstream outlet to pick up the story, albeit only the stuff we published on Saturday not the sister detail. Hopefully more to come.

First it was two signatures that looked very different, now it's two that look eerily similar.... Pt. 2 of my investigation on the Home Secretary's ballot papers and the 2004 'banana republic' vote-rigging trial is out now. birminghamdispatch.co.uk/exclusive-why-…

@jonoland11 Yeah, I found that puzzling. It’s not dated but it just surely be from 2004, when the ballot papers would have been created. It’s 20 years ago so perhaps she’s forgotten when she signed these docs.

@joshi Ta for your reply Joshi. Do you know what year the florid signature is from? The Home Office spokesperson implies it was from April/May 2003 (when Mahmood was 22). Top work, btw.

@83boabobski @brumdispatch We published it in our first story - which I recommend everyone reads. @pennycenturyy’s amazing reporting. birminghamdispatch.co.uk/exclusive-shab…

@joshi @brumdispatch Would be great to see the dads signature would be the acid test

@phillipjclarke @brumdispatch Yeah, I think both are serious, but as much as I hate the threats to us, she’s the Home Secretary and if she lied here, or broke the law, that’s a massive problem.

@joshi @brumdispatch To me there are two important stories here: 1. Shabana Mahmood's differing signatures. 2. The response from the SpAd. To me the SpAd's response is the more important aspect, and the threat of an injunction and home office investigation into the journalist and The Dispatch.

@jonoland11 They applied for their postal votes in 2003, but they ticked the box to keep them for future elections. Unclear if they postal voted in 2003 because polling day was 1 May so I think they missed that deadline.

@joshi It appears that the vote-rigging trial relates to the 2004 election, whereas the differing signatures uncovered by the B'ham Dispatch relate to the 2003 one, so her father hasn't necessarily been exonerated.