to enjoy hearing Paula Vennels being taken apart?

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

Yes - a footballer (or someone the media has it in for) does something in his private life and there's multiple photos and details of his family and partner and kids out there the next day. They ask the neighbours and print his location. JK Rowling can't go shopping without being photographed.

We've had one or two clips of Vennells leaving her house (unknown location) looking very composed, and not saying anything.

Clearly these are prearranged and agreed, but so that people "think" the media is doing a good job hounding her. We've got very little information apart from basic work details. Wasn't it a Channel 4 chairman who approved her gong?

They're basically trying to space things out and delay them hoping the public will lose interest. She's working out a strategy so she can be humiliated a bit, then fuck off privately with her millions.

Back in Sunday School I remember being taught that the 'eye of the needle' was the small door set into a much larger city gate. A camel could pass through it but it would be very difficult.

Not sure if this was correct though.

A key point here is that to some degree bonuses were based on levels of profit which meant the more money was extorted from subpostmasters without real basis, the better the bonuses Vennells et al received. This has horrible implications and so the Post Office senior people have been fighting very hard for years against answering the question: What happened to the money unjustly taken from the subpostmasters?

I don't think this is true, I don't think she's left her house more than a few times in the past weeks.

She looked very uncomfortable when journalists started asking her questions whilst she was out with her bike just a few weeks ago, that was the first time she'd been seen in weeks.

The video was on the TV news but it's hard to make a news story out of "woman with bike refuses to talk to journalists".

Thanks, I'd not heard that explanation before.

Back to the actual thread, yes it is extremely satisfying to see.

If only the people who orchestrated this would get jail time

@nauticant extorted is a very good word for it - pay us this money or you will go to prison.

I'd have thought that was obvious Crying cos she got caught and is being questioned about all the wrong she did.

Hi.

The short answer is because in their eyes we would have made some kind of error in "letting it happen" because their security systems are infallible if followed to the letter 🙄

Our "robbery" was a scam involving an insider job at Alliance & Leicester (then the PO bank) which the PO were aware of but never thought to warn the branches.

I thank God in eight years we were never physically threatened. I used to drive between outreach branches three times a week with a mobile machine and a case full of cash. How no ne'er do wells never clocked that never failed to amaze me.

@PaperTyger Absolutely. That's her fatal flaw and great sin in my eyes.

If anyone wants to follow this on twitter, one of the best accounts to follow, coming from an informed position, is Nick Wallis's:
https://x.com/nickwallis

They've printed the big house she actually isn't living in - she's been filmed somewhere else smaller, but they don't say where it is. I doubt she's even living there tbh or it's a permanent home!

or it's agreed she stays somewhere short term. The media look up house deeds and details quickly for everyone else...not here.

Its not a case of "hasn't been seen in weeks" - I think the media agreed not to print photos of her, but organised a few staged shots to make it look like she's being harassed at home.

No photos of husband or family?

JK Rowling and Prince Harry have both complained about how much detail the media has let slip about their exact location, to encourage randomers to turn up. This hasn't happened.

You can (for example) get her sons name and where he studied fairly quickly (Ted Talk, if you want some Vennells career advice and stories about how to spot business opportunities, postmasters to pay back money they don't owe :-O).

With anyone else, this would be in the articles, or they go through social media of relatives. Same as her husband's details are protected.

I think she's agreed behind the scenes to some selected appearances, including the inquiry, and is planning to disappear privately to a nice life in Scotland or America or similar.

Doubt she's been stuck under media siege at home, she's discussing what to say and not say with her corrupt mates.

I don't think her or anyone should be harassed or physically threatened! but I think there's a set-up to get her off the hook.

Don't forget, she also is probably covering up for individuals who are even richer than her...Some politicians may have known about this.

So she'll be the figurehead, and then she'll may be be paid off even more for keeping quiet.

They all protect each other.

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

Jane McLeod was due to appear before the enquiry in early June but she has coveniently relocated to New Zealand and has refused to participate, either in person or by video/Zoom, and can’t be compelled. As revealed in Nick Wallis's excellent blog.

Five years time, she'll probably be on some sort of charity board (funnelling money around her contacts). I hope I'm very wrong, but it seems the way of the world.

Fuck up peoples lives, lie and obfuscate and delay, then move on.

@Quebeccles Yes - having a "career break". Makes me absolutely furious, the cheek of it not to involve herself.

Hi @CharlotteStreetW1 .

Thank you so much for coming back to me.

I am genuinely gobsmacked.
Gobsmacked at the arrogance of the PO believing their security systems are infallible.

Gobsmacked they blame the victims of violent crime and rub salt in the wound by making they pay back the money that was robbed.

It reminds me of a documentary I watched.
Basically, to celebrate the Millennium, the Millennium Diamond was put on public display at the Millennium Dome.
The police got information a gang was planning on robbing it.

The police was assured by the owners of the Diamond, security and experts that the diamond could not be stolen.

The super duper expensive special glass case it was in, was impossible to open or break.
The absolute certainty and arrogance that the glass case could not be broken, gave the police the go ahead to allow the gang to commit the robbery and catch/arrest them red handed.

Well I'm sure you know what I'm about to say......they watched the gang go in and break the glass case with just a crow bar and a hammer. That's all it took.

Sorry for rambling, but my point is that I, )someone with no expertise in security, know that no security systems are infallible, yet the PO have the arrogance to believe that.
Amazing.

they were talking about this on radio 4 yesterday. I don’t think there’s been a media blackout. Shes just kept a very very very low profile which, let’s face it, is probably immensely sensible.

My background is finance too so it would ring massive alarm bells for me too. Everything should have been reconciled, especially given the complaints around the system. But there was no joined up thinking, no person with an actual over view of everything. Everyone just looking at their little bit and not talking to the next person

Also, what has her family got to do with it? Unless they were somehow involved? We also have to accept that people talk to their partners and spouses as sounding boards. Prime Ministers do it and so do CEOs. But the final decision and responsibility lies with the CEO.

My personal view, and yes it is tainted by the drama and seeing the sub post masters on Victoria Derbyshire etc over the years.

my view, Paula venells emails at least showed a little compassion towards some of the families. I think she had no clue what was going on in her organisation, I think she didn’t know enough about it to ask the right questions from the right people. I think she floated round the edge with everyone telling her what she wanted to hear and hid the truth - partly because she couldn’t understand it or resolve it or because one arm didn’t know the implications it was causing for the other. I think she was completely incompetent and poorly qualified for the job and it was ultimately a chaotic organisation with diabolical communication.

I think Angela was more aware, the emails showed she was post office through and through and couldn’t believe the brand would be in the wrong. I think she believed it should be protected at all cost and these people were out to defraud her beloved.

I hate this witch hunt by media, so I don’t believe it was just them two. I think Fujitsu have a lot to answer for and are remaining very very tight lipped.

I have no doubt Paula Vennells will have had a sleepless night last night, knowing she has more of the same to come today.

As she lay there, did she think 'I brought this on myself' or did she think 'why is God testing me like this?'.

My suspicion is the latter. She sees herself as a victim. Of what I don't know: bigger boys made me do it, it's not fair, everyone else did it.

Is she now getting an insight into what reputational damage means? That what is happening to her, as painful as it no doubt is, is as nothing compared to the suffering inflicted on sub-postmasters and their families?

Or is some of the problem that she didn't really 'see' them at all? She didn't see them as having lives and reputations to be damaged.

She is having to learn the hard lesson that most children learn at some point. Sometimes 'sorry' isn't enough.

its interesting isn’t it.
I don’t believe in karma. But assuming she didn’t know, all this has happened to her reputation by third parties, Fujitsu, her team of people not giving her relevant information.

it’s almost like someone hacking into your business accounts and changing them

There was a whole section of the enquiry looking at Fujitsu, the role of Fujitsu employee Gareth Jenkins is one of the huge hot questions (discussed yesterday). So far, Fujitsu people are the only people who've been interviewed by police under caution, and who are known to be under active investigation for criminal conduct. Gareth Jenkins is due to appear at enquiry soon, and this will potentially be the most revealing and shocking part of it. He has been directly accused of perjury by other witnesses.

She was on the Board of Bedford School, resigned in 2021, there is an address plus other details on Companies House. She lived just outside Bedford according to the listing I saw

All the sub post masters were told that they were the only one with the problem. Gaslighting on a massive scale.

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'?

This is the part which baffled me - postmasters and postmistresses who had been honestly running their businesses for a number of years suddenly all turn into crooks? It's not very likely - the first question should have been "What's changed?" "It's the IT system, we need to look at that."

Basic questions that these people should have asked. They were paid thousands per annum, they weren't office juniors on the minimum wage.

Like others though, I doubt if they will be the ones who end up serving prison sentences.