To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

I've heard it from solicitors too. People have been watching for years and noticed how the Post Office money was so disproportional within Bond Dickinson that it had a huge distorting effect on the firm and as a result the culture inside turned toxic.

Yes. I thought the same then. Barristers, with every respect to them, have little knowledge of how solicitors' firms work. You can and certainly will find excellent, principled lawyers in second, third and fourth tier firms; you can as easily find less competent lawyers in first-tier firms.

Did you watch the Inquiry stream where this very thing was being suggested by counsel the Inquiry?

General Counsel Susan Crichton was excluded from a critical board meeting to deliver critical information, and one explanation would seem to be that a group of people wanted to land all the blame on Susan Crichton that the problems with Horizon were coming to light

So Crichton was their scapegoat of choice when it started to look like they might need one.

I've been struck by how Trump-esque it is in some ways. Unshakeable belief in their own sainthood, combined with always trying to survive one more day.

They see reckonings heaving over the distant horizon, but are convinced they can always outrun them.

I think that's a rather, um, optimistic view of top tier firms. In general, they are just as much in thrall to the big clients as anyone else; the lawyer who loses the Post Office account would always have a lot of very awkward questions to answer, and won't necessarily be able to rely on their superiors to back them up no matter how ethically correct their advice may be.

A summary of today's evidence is that although Alwen Lyons held herself out to be Company Secretary and her activities related to that role, it seems she spent a fair amount of time scurrying around behind the scenes up to all kinds of stuff that was nothing to do with her being Company Secretary.

Generally when asked about these "non-core" activities it was "can't remember", "I actually wasn't involved at all despite what the emails say", or suchlike.

This was to support the mean girls duo of Vennells and Perkins. And Lyons, for whatever reasons, is now stuck with giving evidence that maintains that support.

One of the big things to come out of today was how the General Counsel Susan Crichton was excluded from a critical board meeting to deliver critical information, and one explanation would seem to be that a group of people wanted to land all the blame on Susan Crichton that the problems with Horizon were coming to light and to keep some members of the board somewhat in the dark about what was happening.

I'm genuinely grateful. I put stuff on my calendar, keep in it in mind for weeks, and then... oh, it was yesterday.

I now feel like I've set you some homework!

I'm perking up faintly, thanks nauticant.

Thank you for continuing to give heads ups re the timings. I'll try to watch Vennells from the start.

It looks like Lyons was the creature of Vennells and Perkins and operated as someone who enabled them to be distanced from some of the important action while still having someone to tip them off about what was going on. How depressing.

I'm just at the point@Quirkymewhere Julian Blake KC was asking Lyons about a load of critical functions and how their reporting would get to the board and in every single case it seems that those functions were not represented by a particular board member and so there was no formal route for information to get to the board, and so for this to happen somehow the leaders of those functions would need to get into meetings of the board. (And we've seen evidence of how even the General Counsel, Susan Crichton, would have to wait outside the boardroom for ages in the hope of getting inside only to be snubbed.)

One thing that will get members of the board off the hook is the way they made sure they were insulated away from as much bad news as possible. It'll get them a complete bollocking over failures in corporate governance when the report of the Inquiry is published but that's only reputational harm and their reputations are largely in the shit in any case.

Written in advance but I expect this to be close to the mark:

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/sleepy-lyons/

Jesus Christ, she's useless.

With it being such a big week, I hope you're not still so oppressed at the moment@PerkingFaintlyand you'll be able to watch some of the testimony.

About to start watching Alwen Lyons, former Company Secretary of Post Office. The evidence so far hasn't given much away about what she'll say today but I get the impression she'll come across as an enabler of the two main mean girls, Vennells and Perkins.

Speaking of which, it's a massive week of testimony with 3 days of Paula Vennells starting tomorrow.

Related to that is the latest from Nick Wallis. The General Counsel who was in charge of the disastrous civil litigation, Jane MacLeod, has put herself beyond the jurisdiction of the Inquiry and is taking advantage of being in a foreign country to avoid having to explain her key involvement:

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/former-post-office-general-counsel-refuses-to-cooperate-with-inquiry/

The way it worked with the Post Office is that the top people decided that to save the organisation, ie their own skins, they needed to win the litigation against the Group Legal case (the 555 subpostmasters), and clung onto this even past the point where it was clear they'd lost. This was entangled with the fact that rather than choose a top tier law firm to advise and run the litigation, they'd gone with Bond Dickenson, a 2nd tier legal firm (possibly doing things on the cheap as a disastrous false economy).

Since the income from the Post Office litigation was such a massive part of BD's revenue, they went along with giving the top people at the Post Office what they wanted, ie to maintain the delusion about winning, and thus corrupted themselves, whereas a top tier firm would more likely have had the independence to go with providing sensible legal advice because this would preserve their own reputation, even though it wouldn't be what the top Post Office people would want to hear.

According to Alisdair Cameron, this is what he walked into and he could not get his head around the fact that such a vast legal case was being run by those in a grip of self-delusion.

The lawyers - and we have seen some very slimy examples so far - are often able to abuse the system to their advantage.
However, when that approach fails, the senior management seem to double-down like cult members, believing that the situation will somehow be transformed to their advantage.
As happened with Equitable Life here and BP in the US, the Post Office despite (or perhaps due to) being government-owned appears to have had nobody of integrity at the helm.
Incredibly, some companies attempt the failed approach numerous times, like Boeing blaming pilot error for the Lauda Air and 737-Max tragedies before being found out.

This is a morning of blistering evidence, albeit delivered in measured tones. If Alisdair Cameron (Chief Financial Officer and former Interim Chief Executive of Post Office) is to be believed, he arrived late in the day, was horrified at what he found, and tried to get the very top people to open their eyes and stop listening to lawyers who for some reason were advising to fight on when it was clear to anyone not brainwashed that the case had already been lost, and lost some time before.

😂

Thanks for the updates

Catching up with today's evidence. Which had an unusual start:

I've have just started following this when I can and have been listening to some of the older evidence that I've missed. I spotted this in Jarnail Singh's first evidence last year:-

Jarnail Singh: It was an open-plan office. We had the head of Legal, which was – I’ve forgotten his name now, Hugh Flemington, I think it was, and the director of – or counsel was Susan Crichton. She was a lovely lady, and Hugh, we got on really well. As and when we needed it, needed them to discuss matters, I did. I said, “Look, you know, I can’t deal with it the way it is, the way I want to do it”, because the whole point was it was a challenge and I have always been up for challenges.

Jarnail Singh: Yeah, I don’t know any of them. I mean, even Susan Crichton, I have probably met her. I didn’t know her. Certainly – any of them. I mean, Mandy Talbot I know because I think she was in the civil litigation in the same building and Impact House at Croydon. Hugh Flemington, I don’t know who he was. I mean, subsequently when I joined the – the Post Office Limited on 1 April ‘12, I’ve never met him. I don’t know who he was.

If he can't remember whether or not he knew Susan Crichton & Hugh Flemington, how on earth can any of the rest of his evidence be accepted as truthful (not that I could work out what he was saying most of the time . . . . )

in 2013, following news that former subpostmaster Martin Griffith was critically ill in hospital after attempting to take his own life, one of the first things Davies did was to tell the Post Office’s general counsel of the need to find a specialist media lawyer. At the time, Griffiths was being forced to repay unexplained account shortfalls on the Horizon system and was losing his Post Office branch. Griffiths died in hospital weeks later.

Going back a few days to Mark Davies (former Group Communications & Corporate Affairs Director at Post Office) what was clear was that Counsel asking questions and the retired judge leading the Inquiry, Sir Wyn Williams, loathed the man. Probably because he'd enthusiastically embraced the task of misleading people in the interests of covering up the scandal. In fact, he saw that as his job. The only other comparable loathing I've seen is for the bent lawyers who were willing to corrupt the legal process to benefit Post Office.

At the end of Davies's evidence, Sir Wyn Williams was so sick of hearing from him that he sharply called a halt to the proceedings making it clear he wouldn't permit any questions from other Counsel in the room, a major break from established practice, which would have led to even more dissembling from Davies.

On the following day, Sir Wyn Williams, knowing that he'd let irritation get the better of him and having done something he shouldn't have done, apologised to everyone (although I don't think Davies was included in the apology).

Teary all the way through, with moments of it looking like she was going to collapse into shock. Overall, in a sea of liars, she didn't look to be going out of her way to mislead the Inquiry.

She was another one who fell victim to Vennells doing her Lady Macbeth routine, related to which see some interesting background here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm5454yypxxo