Paula Vennels being questioned at the Post Office Inquiry, followed by others - thread 2

I've worked in both the public and private sectors. All my managers and mentors, in both the public and private sectors, told me that good managers take personal responsibility for all their direct reports, especially if things go wrong, but would give credit to those that work under them when things go well.

PV must have been a spectacularly bad manager - but to be sort of fair, she must have been set a spectacularly bad example over the years to have learnt and thought that her attitude was normal, let along acceptable

On second thoughts, I did experience one manager that was a bully who used to take the credit for others' hard work and achievements but beat them up and blame them when things went wrong (eg when I was cracking under the strain of covering for a colleague who'd gone off ill with stress and overwork ). But he was the exception that proved the rule

it never occurred to them that sending people wrongfully to prison was a thing they should be held accountable for beyond a platitude.
Literally not one person around Paula Vennels could see that POL, were the prosecutors and therefore were in effect the Frank Scuse and the Bent Coppers of the story.Of coursethey think miscarriages of justice are appalling, but extenuating circumstances apply to the ones in which they are instrumental.

Fully agree @OligoN

This is typified from the witness evidence from everyone: from the Secuirty Investigations guys, In house Criminal Lawyers, all the way to Paula Vennels.

When the investigators and lawyers were questioned last year, in this Inquiry, they were shown how they didn't do their jobs properly.
There was lots of "I don't recall", "I dont remember" etc, but when they couldnt deny it, their excuse for completely fucking up was "i was told to do that, I was just following orders".

Now, forgive me for sounding crass, but we've heard this excuse before........

They all agreed miscarriages of justice is terrible, but all of them came up with this stupid excuse:
it wasn't me guv'
but if it was me, I'm not to blame cos I was just doing what I was told

And this attitude goes all the way up to the top.

Sorry for rant, I'm still can't get over their patronising, arrogant, refusal to admit any mistakes, and attitudes when they were giving evidence in this inquiry.

I am sure that, while she was CEO, Vennells never believed that there were any miscarriages of justice. She was part of the culture that was typified by investigators who regarded subpostmasters as enemies of Post Office.

Her thinking was exposed by her comment that "as CEO you aren't responsible for everything that happens underneath you". I'm afraid you are. You may not be aware of it. You may even disapprove of it. But you are still responsible for it, even if what has happened goes against your express instructions.

I don’t think she will at all. She will console herself that they all agreed with her, anyone could/would have made the same mistake.

There is zero chance that she will actually examine her conscience as to the example she was setting/ culture she was creating.

She said she loved the Post Office, and that stops her considering how her love for this inanimate thing prevented her from reflecting on her role in creating miscarriages of justice. She just didn’t see SPM as people like her that were deserving of respect and justice.

She saw the second sight report as something which they would “Take Action On”. If you read the invitation to the SPM to take part in the 2nd Sight review what is clear is (a) They saw this as an act of largesse, (b) just how deeply they patronize the SPM (c) how much they assumed 2nd sight would of course play ball. (d) there was nothing really serious happening, it never occurred to them that sending people wrongfully to prison was a thing they should be held accountable for beyond a platitude.
Literally not one person around Paula Vennels could see that POL, were the prosecutors and therefore were in effect the Frank Scuse and the Bent Coppers of the story. Of course they think miscarriages of justice are appalling, but extenuating circumstances apply to the ones in which they are instrumental.

I agree, but I suspect she still views herself in this way. A perfect person surrounded by fools who cannot understand her and let her down.

To me, it's more likely that she'll have a period of contemplation and reflection that will allow her world view becoming even more firmly established.

And let’s face it you wouldn’t even have to be absolutely amazing to be better than her. Just institute some basic management controls and stop deciding everything by email between about 5 people/your mates who only tell you what you want to hear. And sack the Communications Director for a start.

The thing is I’m sure there are loads of really excellent CEO’s or potential CEO’s who would work for £0.5M plus bonuses.

they recruited her from within. I think there lies the problem.

Her performance has been utterly pathetic. It was clear that her primary focus was protecting the financial value and reputation of the post office and anything that did not fit that aim was ignored or attacked. Her crocodile tears are rightly being met with eye-rolling and terseness by the lawyers and chair.

Sadly, in my experience, she is the archetype of modern public sector leadership. Out of her depth, morally vapid, unable to take responsibility, looking to pass the buck to others at every turn, obsessed with reputation over substance. This is what happens when you put mates in high places and don't pay for excellence.

I do wonder if Paula Vennells is now suffering a crisis of the soul. She, no doubt, had a view of herself as being a 'good' person. The three days of questioning peeled that back layer by layer to reveal a person who was anything but good.

I expect she will shortly be admitted to a room in the Huw Edwards Wing of the Clinic for Disgraced Public Figures.

By correctly I mean in accordance with the strict letter of the law. I thought it was cowardly.

Look at Loŕd Arbuthnots evidence to this phase of the enquiry. I think he was after Alan Bates. Him and Mr Beer go through a very formal accusation that she told 16 very specific lies of omission at that meeting. It was an utterly complete condemnation of her conduct and honesty.

She was asked no direct questions about this meeting because she claimed (and I think correctly) that she was formally covered by parlimentary privelidge.

Watch Arbuthnots evidence again, now with that knowledge in mind. It is electrifying.

Last night I was watching Vennell's and van den Bogard's appearances at the Parliamentary committee, which I think was 9 years ago now. The same dissembling was going on then. You would think that after that experience they would have sharpened up their acts and found evidence of the supposedly good things they had managed to do.

There was an interesting series of posts on X from Prof Lucy Easthope (disaster management expert) a few days ago, commenting in the wake of PV's appearance. She mentioned that she was being contacted by people who'd worked with PV, wanting to communicate their experiences….and they weren’t good ones, unsurprisingly.

(Also, @Bushtika - I saw that too and was similarly amazed. How are these things allowed to happen? And keep on happening?)

Posting here to see if anyone of you knowlegeable people might have a view on the Jane MacLeod issue as I've been mulling over it. I can see why Sir Wyn thinks its not worth trying to take a legal route to get her to attend as it would be pretty impossible to enforce. However, if he served her a s21 notice and she failed to comply that would still be a criminal offence I think (IANAL)? which would give the SRA a reason to strike her off so at least she'd no longer be able to work as a lawyer. Small and petty perhaps but still sends a message that you can't just bugger off to the other side of the planet with impunity.

Seems like managers are there to uphold & manage the façade!

Edit:
@ThePearlSloth , it does feel to me as if something is missing from PV, her demeanour isnt quite right to me.

Post Office scandal: Police to deploy 80 detectives for criminal inquiry | Post Office Horizon scandal | The Guardian

I mean that these managers dismiss the truth because it is inconvenient to them and because it makes them look inefficient. Thank goodness for Alan Bates and Dr Gradel for refusing to be cowed and thus allow big institutions to make big mistakes because it is easier to ignore the truth.

I have just watched the BBC2 about the theft at the British Museum. A Mr Bates type man realised that someone was stealing from the Museum and putting treasures for sale on EBAY. He wrote to the managers/ directors in charge of the museum. All his concerns were dismissed and he was made to feel that he was going mad
Do mangers actually do a good job I wonder.

I can’t stand The One Show but this was a decent feature. Vennells’ email is unnecessarily vile and weirdly vindictive - especially for a woman of the cloth. It’s the hypocrisy and duplicity that really unsettles me. I really do wonder how she squares it all with her conscience and all I can assume is that she believes she is a good person and therefore nothing she thinks or does could be wrong. Just like the Post Office is good and could not, therefore, be wrong. And Horizon is robust. She apologised (emptily) for being ‘rude’ in that email but showed no shame or embarrassment about it because she doesn’t really understand why her email was so dreadful. I’m not sure she has a full set of empathy bones. Sociopath? Narcissist? Something is amiss…

and the metal showed her true colours as she forgot the slogan "don't put in an email what you don't want read out in court" pardon...

Confirmation bias backed up by the fact that the woefully untrained investigators, who had no real knowledge of the legal framework that they operated in (see evidence by Bradshaw, Cottham etc), were paid a bonus contingent on how much cash they "recovered".

They came up with a gambit "threaten with prosecution for theft, accept a confession to false accouting", which was totally illegal but highly effective and so the bonuses flowed in.

Lawyers at PO offered no real oversight to the process, and the PO board insisted that everything was fine, and that the losses were real.

Confirmation bias was at work. The investigation team and, it seems, some others within Post Office had long believed that many subpostmasters had their hands in the till. Here was the proof they had been looking for.