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?

That’s very true, I had a boss who put me through hell, blaming me for anything that went wrong, brought me to a disciplinary, when I told my new manager that I was being bullied by her she tried to force me to apologise for calling her out. I was made redundant in the end. But I did see lots of horrible emails she sent about me , even one to her husband discussing my anxiety and depression which she only knew about, when she asked for a letter from my doctor, she didn’t like what my doctor wrote either, asked me to explain it. Everyone in the company either backed her or turned a blind eye. She kept her job and went off with a nice pension.

i hope Paula vennels gets everything she deserves, it does seem to be people like that seem to get to the top.

@Kidsaregrim I wish someone, the BBC perhaps, would pay to try out this AI video system designed to detect people lying.

https://liarliar.ai/

At best there has been strategic incompetence. Anyone who did question was got rid of. And you have to ask 'why?'.

Did the senior leadership team never look at the rise in the number of 'frauds' since the IT system came in? Or did they all congratulate themselves on now being able to catch sub-postmasters with their fingers in the till. Did they not question how they had previously 'got away with it'?

Did the central accounting team not notice they were receiving cash top ups from sub-postmasters? There must have been reconciliation going on. Surely there were investigations.

When I first started working in accounting I did cashbook. Any sort of surplus was always a big red flag.

And Paula Vennells was in charge of all of this. Was she simply incompetent? Was this supposed to be the plum job at the end of a modestly successful career? Nice big salary, pension and a gong at the end of it. No actual work was supposed to be involved.

I wonder if much of it is simply having the brass neck and inflated ego to keep applying for these jobs and to feel entirely sure of your superiority and entitlement to the money. That and a willingness to turn a blind eye and not cause waves no matter what because you do not give a f*ck as long you get as much money as possible.

I must say, PV has horrible soulless, dead eyes

Did the central accounting team not notice they were receiving cash top ups from sub-postmasters? There must have been reconciliation going on. Surely there were investigations.

i think this was covered in the itv drama. I think they just went into a slosh pool and eventually into profits.
funny how they can have unaccounted for money yet the post masters couldn’t

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the ego comment. It has to be that “I’m very good at my job”
I don’t necessarily believe it’s a conscious turn a blind eye, more of a don’t know enough to ask the right question’s, don’t want to look stupid by asking them or wouldn’t know where to start with dealing with the issues.

@ALovelyCupOfNameChange I also think a lot of it was her being afraid to challenge or ask to difficult questions for fear of being stupid. To be clear this doesn't exonerate her one bit in my eyes, it is a sign of terrible incompetence. But I just don't get the sense she approached anything that she was told by anyone on her team remotely critically. All the emails shown in the hearing are very smooth, calm and unchallenging. That is in itself weird to me. To be a leader at that level you need to be tough and hard sometimes, not rude, but not just so go with the flow.

The smoking gun email exchange in which MacLoed explains that there is a difference between what has been said in statements about the possibility of external tampering, vs the truth, and references super-users - something Beer held PV to account on, because PV didn't appear to question who or what super-users were, or why this "communication gap" had emerged - could either be a sign of knowing complicity in the coverup on PV's part, or it could be - and I lean towards this interpretation - simply that she did not have it in her to say - hang on, what? You're telling me there's a difference between what we've stated, and reality? Can you be more precise and then can you explain how? Etc. she just said, ok, thanks, that's clear. Because I just don't think she wanted to rock the boat at all, or entertain the possibility that she and her team were in the wrong.

One of the biggest cases of "see no evil..." I've ever seen.

@laclochette I'm not sure I agree.

She did ask questions but only in a way to get the answer she wanted eg nick Wallis transcript.

She didn't want to find anything out and I wonder if there is something else going on to want to perpetuate all that pain and suffering? She was deliberately inactive.

I have only just started watching the inquiry videos on YouTube over the last few days. I am totally staggered by the level of incompetence from all of them. It’s like you don’t even know where to start with how bad they all are.

Alwen Lyons Company Secretary. Seems to have confused the role of Company Secretary with er being a Secretary. She seems to have completely missed the regulatory/governance side of her role. How much was she paid to pull together papers and do the minutes (which weren’t well written). She also spelt “lose” as “loose”. A half decent PA could have done a much better job of running the Board meetings.

Lesley Revell IT Director/CIO. Shockingly bad. Didn’t seem to add anything. Just forwarded emails. Allowed Paula Vennells husband to have an influence in terms of how issues with Horizon were defined. There are usually strict definitions in Service Management and Systems documentation around how issues are defined and managed eg what would constitute a fault, bug, incident etc. she just rolled over.

Mark Davies. Ideas above his station and his written comms were rubbish. Needed to have been put back in his box

Patrick Bourke. Arrogant and aggressive. Some of his emails would have got him sacked in a lot of organisations and that goes for all of them.

Only one to come out with a modicum of credit/decency in my view so far was Alasdair Cameron the FD but again with his experience at partner level I would have expected more firm action.

They seemed to try to manage by email. There seemed to be absolutely no governance or control of any sort. It’s absolutely sickening when you think what they were all paid and how they treated the postmasters all because they had no clue how to appropriately manage their key supplier. There most definitely was a conspiracy at senior levels to deny any issues with Horizon.

It’s actually quite frightening to think of the powers these incompetents had. And this is after the event. I really can’t imagine what it must have been like trying to deal with these idiots as a postmaster.

However what levers are available to punish them? If criminal charges won’t stand up could the government cancel their public sector pensions?

Exactly. Throughout public sector.@littlbrowndog

And schools and education. @PaperTyger

Bit of a stretch from PV, the PO and very serious failings to every public sector body, every school, all of education and everyone who works within it.

Remember, public services, schools and education are Conservative government led with the associated massive budget cuts. Staff work incredibly hard to provide a service on an every shortening shoe string.

My husband was saying earlier that there is clearly a media black out on her family and that she is being protected by some powerful people

I assumed the poster meant education ministers and the like

I agree - how on earth she became a vicar l will never know. Just seems mean and cold.

Ah gotta love (some,) Christians.

Now what was it their chap allegedly said?

"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" wasn't it?

Just sayin.

I think a big part of the issue is the huge personal wealth that you can accumulate in these organisations.

If a board member pushed hard and tried to tell her something she didn't want to hear, then they'd basically get the sack. Susan Crichton springs to mind - Vennels said something like "she put her ethical responsibilities as a lawyer above the interests of the PO".

You end up with a group of incompetant idiots who will lose their pay / bonus if they ever fall out with the boss. I also imagine that they were all disgusting sycophants who crawled over each other trying to impress the boss / stick knives in each others backs.

If anyone wants to see what these people are really like, devote a few hours to watching the archived videos of Janail Singh and Rod Williams ( for example). The incompetence these people displayed is jaw dropping.

@PaperTyger Yes she only asked questions for clarification that would allow her to detail the party line. My point is that I haven't seen - and I've not reviewed all the inquiry docs to be fair - any point where she questions that party line, a decision by anyone else or the quality of anyone's work, advice etc. Not once!

Some people think that this is a mistranslation. It shouldn't be "camel" but "rope" which still makes sense as a saying

Because she didn’t care one jot, I don’t think it can be emphasised enough just how indifferent she really was to outcomes or impacts on anyone other than how it related to her. She was there to do the minimum required to be seen to be doing her job to stay least some degree even if it was just turning up and answering a few emails, and she wanted a hell of a lot of money for doing so.

Realduchymarmalade · Today 07:15

"I must say, PV has horrible soulless, dead eyes"

Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs...

Also the culture was apprently one of catching the sneaky post masters at last with their hands in the till, the system was doing what it was created for

@laclochette I think you are absolutely right.

An active policy of not wanting to deal with anything difficult. This was supposed to be a sinecure.

@ALovelyCupOfNameChange I am an accountant, you don't (or shouldn't have) slush pots. Everything comes from somewhere, goes somewhere. This extra money would have come in to some sort of cash clearing account. What was happening after that? Too much cash is always a red flag.

@Username056 Yes - my heart breaks for the postmasters. Dealing with these people and their smooth, cold, soulless creation of a self-serving alternative reality must truly and literally have been an experience that drove you mad.

I don't think she wanted too though she was the party it was her party.