to enjoy hearing Paula Vennels being taken apart?

[Sausagenbacon]

Is anyone else listening - radio 5 at the moment. Paula Vennels being slowly picked apart by an expert?

She's friends with Dido Harding, another classic 'failing upwards' type. She got a nice cushy job being Chair of an NHS trust (Imperial I think) via Dido. She also had a bunch of other board roles that paid very nicely thank you. So much cronyism.

She was the only prime minister who actually got the contaminated blood inquiry started. All other PMs had ignored it.

For all those asking where to watch or catch up, Inquiry website here, with link to live YouTube during the sessions, plus recordings of all previous sessions.

Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgijUpaux8X4Nvjx3TmrHhg

postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/hearings

Colour me surprised.

So Justin Welby had plans to back this disastrous woman as Bishop of London. And today he tweets ‘be kind’. 🙄 She was his confidant apparently, and indeed, as with Dido all these vipers appear to writhe about in the same nest.

I voted YABU because no, I'm not enjoying it. It is necessary and she deserves to be grilled but it's a horrible and upsetting case, of which no part is enjoyable.

Jesus wept.

No really, he would have. To see clerics unabashedly lining their pockets and crushing the life out of the little people.

The sheer crass hypocrisy beggars belief.

Dickens would have done justice to this, I like to think. Mr Beer would be the main character, guiding a pupil barrister in the ways of cutting through clerical venality to truth.

I share the Beer admiration on here. He is rather splendid.

Me too.

Wonderful.

Skilled craftsman.

Goodness . . . . he seems to have replaced the King's equerry in the affections of the public!

But I'm sure he wouldn't look as good in a kilt . . . . .

Have watched it on and off on ITVX. I have neighbours who know the family of one of the postmasters who was local to us and committed suicide. They say the accusations and prosecution absolutely destroyed the family - they lost their home and savings and the life insurance wouldn’t pay out when he eventually took his own life. Ms Vennels, on hearing of his suicide immediately ordered an investigation into his background and mental health, as in her view it couldn’t have been down to ‘just this issue’. She’s a hypocrite of the highest order and I hope that the next time she’s in the pulpit it’s for a guest appearance at Sunday services in Holloway.

I've just been reading up on Jason Beer. What an impressive man. Head of chambers, involved in so many high profile enquiries and a deputy High Court judge.

Why can't there be more people like him running our public services?

I've really been struck by how incompetent PV is today. No wonder this country is in the mess it is when there seem to be so many useless people in charge.

Why can't there be more people like him running our public services?

Why would anyone with his brain want to run a public service?

Most highly qualified people I know who have 'oomph' wouldn't dream of working in the public sector because of the calibre of many people in it.

Sadly that's true.

ShadesofPoachedSmoke I entirely agree with you. Show me a member of the clergy or some other god worshipper and I will immediately be suspicious.

Too much experience, unfortunately, in both my work life and in my wider family. Bloody hypocrites, so many of them.

How the church can have any support for PV is totally beyond me.

As a former sub-postmistress under her ("you got robbed? You pay it back out of your own money"), I'm fucking loving it!

I'm at work (in a job I love where I'm valued) so can only catch up on highlights but there have been plenty!

This is true.

And if you go into politics you find yourself surrounded by a civil service or cohort of local authority officers largely captured by le groupthink du jour, like 'Stonewall law' or some other EDI nuttiness while your fellow politicians range from the vacuous to the exhaustingly narcissistic wily coyote types.

And just to add to his allure, he is a Maori.

I love the phrase 'exhaustingly narcissistic wily coyote types'.

Try working in a university, quite a few of these in the upper echelons.
Not doing a great job, think they are God's Gift, then seamlessly moving on to a new role/new university.

Handsomely paid at all times. Mostly men with a handsomely sized ego.

OR OBE = Other bloke's efforts

You're not wrong. And, if he hasn't been mentioned already, Adam Crozier who was CEO of Royal Mail was also CEO of the FA. Currently Chair of (among other things) Whitbread and ASOS and previously ITV.

WTF does a CEO even do? And why aren't I one?

Is this the one he questioned her about - Ellesmere Port, Cheshire?

She should have read Private Eye - they knew more about what was going on in her organisation than she did (apparently).
I guess she'll never be poor / homeless because unless her husband divorces her he'll provide somewhere to live. Should go to Jail though - it's only what she did to others.

Hi @CharlotteStreetW1

("you got robbed? You pay it back out of your own money")

I'm pleased you have posted, because I am at a complete loss to why sub-master/mistress had to pay back losses when you are robbed.

This came up for Martin Griffiths, the gentleman who commented suicide. His post office was robbed and part of the prosecution into him was that he didn't pay the amount the robbers took.

I dont understand why.
As far as I'm aware, in no other business would you be expected to pay back money fur a crime you didn't commit, in which you were robbed.

I hope you don't mind me asking you, why the Post Office made you do this