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

https://x.com/nickwallis/status/1793306047290970286
This is the account I was referring to
I found it so much easier to read rather than watch you tube.
But I can understand that he may well not have done any others .

Thank you so much @nauticant .I don't know why I'm struggling with this, I can normally find things easily .

@meimei80 where are you rewatching the last barrister ?
I've found it hard to identify sections on you tube and find myself rewatching a different day altogether .
And I read Nick Wallis's excellent blog on the first day - does anyone know if he did another ?

Excellent points @Fizbosshoes and @WiddlinDiddlin

who did make the decision to tell the SPM they were the only ones when they patently weren’t.

I fervently hope that some of those responsible are brought to brook. In their pockets and reputations.

Reflecting back, ironically it may be the impact on wealthy people and institutions that sees PV convicted.

The paper trail and her evidence is clear that PV was completely responsible for the removal of the “risk” of civil cases from the Royal Mail prospectus. I think this will come under the remit of FCA or its predecessor FSA about not providing potential investors with full disclosure.

Good point whoever said it - who made the decision to tell people that they were the only person reporting problems. Thats not a throwaway remark said to just one person, it's not an implication, its something specifically said, some part of a script the helpline people were given. Someone made a decision to do that, for a reason - who was that, what did they know?

That was going on long before Zero Recall Vennells was involved. Did it come from Fujitsu or from POL?

She's a psychopath- people died and their lives changed irrevocably because of her actions. She doesn't give a shit!!

Her attending hospital appointments while failing to read any documents for an enquiry until recently are knocked into a cocked hat by having to give birth while under a jail.sentence.

The crying annoyed me too and the self pity. She started going on about how she had resigned her various post PO positions and had been working hard on this enquiry and attending hospital appointments ( I suspected for a family member?) and at this point she got all teary. There seemed to be no contrition, that now she knew what other people had been put through.

Some sort of sociopathy or narcissistic personality maybe?

Spot on. I agree

I also thought the crying showed a tremendous lack of dignity in a mature professional woman who was patently crying for herself and not attempting to compose herself until told to by Jason Beer. I admit I’m not much of a crier but I find it very unprofessional AND disingenuous. I also noted the flash of anger in her eyes immediately after she ‘loved the post office‘ and someone (inaudible) heckled her. THEN she started bawling. Screwing her face up like a red faced child. Extraordinary. Awful.

Think I missed that bit

Erm. Game of thrones?! Wild stab in the dark 😆

The thing that puzzled me was that if the programme was glitchy or had faults why were they always in favour of the post office (ie the subpostmasters had to pay from their own money) ....if there were random errors why weren't there a number of accounts where the amount shown was much lower than accounted for?

But also while I absolutely think Paula Vennells carries much of the responsibility and is being rightly held to account, her name has been linked and publicised far more so than either her predecessor or successor, both of whom held the position while the scandal was unravelling. Or anyone at horizon or Fujitsu?? The horizon helpline was fobbing off people left right and centre telling them thry were the only one. Who authorised that script and clearly knew it was an ongoing and widespread problem....?

@nauticant Agreed, and I may be a poor judge of demeanor but everything about his tone and attitude came across as more frank and more honest than anything from PV. His willingness to enter into true self-scrutiny and organisational criticism, and his willingness to admit that mistakes were made and to pinpoint them, rather than PV's pathetic bleating of "I didn't know" or "I did what I thought was right" was simply a whole different ball game.

Another thing that has really struck me through all of this is that I don't feel I've seen a single instance where she actually took a stance and exercised executive judgment or power. Now, I appreciate a CEO must consult their team on key issues. A dictatorship would be just as bad but in the other direction. But at no moment does she seem to have sought advice, but then decided to act against it, or sought advice, received conflicting advice and made a decision. She always seems to have asked other people what to do/what she should do, and just done it.

Now I appreciate that is in part a strategy to distance herself before the inquiry from the decisions made - "I just acted on the advice of x, it isn't my fault". But it isn't JUST that, at least from the communications we've seen. I can't see any instance where she says anything like, "I hear your view but I don't agree, I think we need to ..."

So what on earth was she paid for??! She was just a conduit for the team around her, there's no sense she had any views herself, any ability to see that her team's judgement might ever be clouded by their personal interests or perspectives...

@Sceptic1234 I completely agree about the universities comments. The only reason why the staff, both academic & support, stay so long is because they'd struggle to be employed elsewhere. It's quite a unique atmosphere where staff become so reliant on the HE structure, almost like the way fish requires water to survive.

@PlacidPenelope The critical detail on the bugs which doesn't excuse her but rather reveals a lot about the sort of cover-uppy, non-questioning culture she embodied, was that there are a few moments when she said that once some bugs were brought to light, because she was reassured by others that the issues they had given rise to had been identified and dealt with, that meant the system generally wasn't one beset by bugs. What is truly bonkers - and Alistair Cameron said as much in his testimony - is that at no point did anyone, especially PV, seem at this point to stop and say - well, maybe that's the tip of the iceberg and at the very least we should go back and double triple check that there wasn't anything buggy behind the other cases, including the ones that have led to convictions. Nope - she was told that ok, there WERE in fact some bugs, but they were all small, and dealt with. And she just accepted that! And moreover, that sort of rolled into a continued belief that there were somehow "no bugs", as if "some bugs that we think we've dealt with" was basically the same as "no bugs". It's a really slippery thought process that I can only assume is rooted in a determined desire to see no evil.

That's something that has always annoyed me too, all of a sudden after years and years of paper accounting and unannounced audits a new computer system is installed and woah massive theft is going on which was never uncovered previously? Either the auditors were shit and missed it previously in which case they heed to be held accountable or there is something amiss in the computer systems recording.

@PlacidPenelope I think it's a sort of confirmation bias - they thought the robbing had gone on for years and they were finally catching it, they blinded themselves to any logical thought beyond that and congratulated each other on a job well done. I agree that to anyone outside the organisation it's gobsmacking.

True love. The post office had given her everything she wanted in life. Wealth, power, status, influence, a sense of identity (most important in my opinion) .... why would she not love the post office?

Those tears and "I love the Post Office" are twanging something in my memory...

Can't place it, but some character, real or fictional, saying, "You'll never know what I've done for you..." as they die or are carted off.

And the object of their devotion is puzzled and worried, because dreadful things have happened and people have died.

And it transpires the devotee has done these terrible things to, as the devotee saw it, "protect" the object of their devotion. Indeed the devotee feels heroic, that they were the only one brave enough to have done these difficult things, out of love...

Now what film is that from?

She let it slip today when pressed on whether she had preferenced the needs of the Post Office over everything else. She broke down and said she'd loved the post office. It's as simple as that in the end. She was so blinkered and so obsessed with protecting the Post Office's reputation and its return to commercial viability, that she completely discounted all the evidence that Horizon was the problem. She clung to her deluded belief that the sub postmasters were light fingered liars and was part of a wider self reinforcing corporate culture of refusing to accept any responsibility for what had happened.