To draw your attention to Mr Bates vs The Post Office

[5foot5]

There is already a thread about this on the Telly Addicts forum here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4970440-mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-mon-to-thur-itv-9pm-tv-pace-no-spoilers

However this seems like such an important subject that I thought I would draw attention to it on AIBU.

The first episode aired tonight but the whole series is available on itvx.

Most of you will no doubt have heard about the Horizon scandal, but whether you have or you haven't this program is compelling. It will probably make you furious but it deserves as wide an audience as possible.,

She's not the most convincing of witnesses 🤔

That was the weekly fire alarm. They always break for a few minutes while it's on and then resume.

Someone has suggested to her the term "challenges" as a less emotive euphemism for "accusations".

She's used it several times now.

Just as with the word "bugs."

@nauticant

Oh never seen them do that before! Thank you, haha the guy next to him was laughing

100

She's full of shite.

"I think you conflate too many things if I may".

Looking at my youtube feed it's frustrating to see that it's misrepresenting the number of viewers as being 40. I was hoping to see an accurate number to have an idea of the interest.

Like with the Covid inquiry, there is an awful lot of 'I don't recall'

It's embarrassing tbh.

Ooh, Sir Williams Wynn is onto something about, "Surely with separation, and the Royal Mail having most of the lawyers, the subject of who would be doing the prosecutions would have come up?"

Oops, sorry, Sir Wyn Williams. Getting him confused with a historical figure.

What's with the breaks? They've only just had one and there's another now?

It's an exhausting process to go through. Things fall apart if people get to the point where they can't focus properly. The Chair has to have an especially high level of concentration.

In my experience breaks are actually essential every hour or so.

I suppose so? I've never been through anything like this myself.

It's an absolute endurance test for the legals and the witnesses. I'm in full admiration of lead counsel ? Is that what he is? The relentless questioner. Admirable. Little to no sympathy for the PO witnesses, an assemblage of people who should have been suffering from Imposor Syndrome but believed themselves competent instead.

Urgh, that woman getting tearful on the radio just now.

Lead counsel Jason Beer: https://www.5essex.co.uk/profile/jason-beer-kc/

Busy bloke, he is presently instructed in:

• The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, as Leading Counsel to the Inquiry
• The Covid 19 Inquiry, as Leading Counsel for NHS England
• The Grenfell Tower Inquiry, as Leading Counsel for the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
• The Thirlwall Inquiry, as Leading Counsel for NHS England
• The Malkinson Inquiry, as Leading Counsel for Greater Manchester Police
• The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, as Leading Counsel for Counter Terrorism Policing South East
• The Jalal Uddin Inquiry, as Leading Counsel to the Inquiry
• The Undercover Policing Inquiry, as Leading Counsel for a group of undercover police officers

Another important email. "This shouldn't have reached me... avoid unnecessary additional noise about Horizon". Repeats concept that there has never been anything proved to be wrong about Horizon.

So, circular. Haven't yet found any probs => don't tell me about any probs => don't find any probs.

The viewer count has updated: 18772.

I get the impression Vennells is relaxing into giving evidence and is defaulting into I'm important and authoritative. The humility has faded.

Yes, and as part of the big boss performance there's a lot of 'I trusted the lawyers to give me full, fair and accurate information...' I think she's thrown Susan Creighton under the bus more than once this afternoon.

That's par for the course because Vennells also stitched Crichton up for being to blame for getting Second Sight onboard which turned out to be a massive thorn in the side of the top management, and made sure that everyone saw this as being a sort of treachery, and, with Crichton having a blackened name, Vennells was able to work with others to drive Crichton out of the business.

Crichton might be highly compromised in her actions, but introducing Post Office to Second Sight proved to be one of the foundation stones of the scandal being uncovered.

Note the parallels:
When the scandal was still uncovered Vennells blackened Crichton's name as someone who'd risked it becoming known.
Now the scandal is completely blown and people might be held to account, Vennells is still blaming Crichton but this time as a bad person who kept information about the scandal hidden from her.

I still don't know how she could square her religious beliefs with doing that job and not quitting it in disgust due to actual morals and principles. It's one reason I don't understand people having a religion when those at the top of them are often questionable individuals.