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

[nauticant]

A continuation of the discussion started by@Sausagenbaconhere:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5080262-to-enjoy-hearing-paula-vennels-being-taken-apart

Paula Vennells' 3 days of evidence ends today but there are more hearings coming up and we can discuss those too.

When the hearings are going on, live-streaming can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/featured

All of the previous hearings can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/videos

The BBC are currently going with this being the bombshell from this morning:

The inquiry has heard that Ms Vennells removed a line from a Royal Mail prospectus about the Post Office's IT system.

The revelation could potentially have serious consequences, as it might mean the prospectus was inaccurate at the time of Royal Mail's privatisation.

https://news.sky.com/story/post-office-inquiry-latest-ex-post-office-boss-facing-final-day-of-questioning-13140600

I think the idea here is that this might provide one ground to take some form of legal action against Vennells.

All of her crying (even the fake crocodile tears) are setting the women's movement and women trying to break the glass ceiling back so many decades! I mean if it was a bloke in that seat giving evidence at the enquiry, he simply wouldn't be given the opportunity to cry so often and to gather themselves before questioning took up again.

She is such a disappointment to women, to executives, to the Church of England and to so so so many people affected by her conduct then and now. I'd be so embarrassed if I was related to her in any way.

Shame on her.

I cannot bear the way that she presents herself as hard working and caring as a CEO but allowed the sub post masters and mistresses to be treated so harshly. The point where the new contract made it clear that any shortfall had to be covered by the SPM/M. Surely she could have challenged the wording?
I will never forgive her for failing to show any interest/respond to Tim McCormack's email about Seema Misra (pregnant post mistress sent to prison). She knew about her but failed to act.

I'm looking forward to watching all the coverage 🤠

Unfortunately it's been such an insane week for news the story is getting far less coverage than it deserves.

On Radio 2, Jeremy Vine as I type

She's making a lot of use of the same strategy we saw spelt out in a briefing for a meeting with, IIRC, James Arbuthnot about Second Sight preliminary report:

a) say we're pleased with how good the report says we are in any positive or neutral findings;
b) talk about thousands of happy SPMs who have no problems;
c) describe findings of gross and critical failures which had destroyed individuals' lives as "identified some areas where we can make further improvements, which we look forward to doing".

She trotted the same out today, I think in response to Mr Henry saying something like, "Here's some cast-iron evidence of you being told of life-destroying error by POL, which you claim came as news to you; how did you react?"

The Inquiry statement on Jane MacLeod, the General Counsel who fled to Australia:

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/chairs-statement-regarding-former-post-office-general-counsel-jane-macleod

spoiler: not much practical that can be done

A bit of aside that just popped into my head…. going back to the subpostmaster, Martin Griffiths, who committed suicide. As well as spurious horizon-related money, he was also held accountable for the money that was stolen in an armed raid on his post office? How can this be possible legally? How could the post office hold him liable for that?

If I recall correctly it was suggested that he had been remiss in organising the security of the money held at the Post Office and had thus contributed in some way to the loss.

I think it was because he hadn't followed the security measures exactly to the letter.

They could then say he was at fault

Disgusting.
I agree about the crying. What an embarrassment.

Can you imagine a man in her position keep on snivelling into tissues up there?

Those who think no-one will end up being held accountable for this may be interested to know that Alan Bates has said that the JFSA will fundraise to launch private criminal prosecutions if the police don't take action. There are currently three police investigations in progress.

Yes this is my experience too

Just catching up.

What a wriggling worm she comes across as. All self promotion and avoiding answering the question. Nobody can be fooled. It makes her look even worse IMHO.

This is why these inquiries take bloody years! There has been just over 2 hours of questioning today and that's it. Its a bloody scam for that to happen. Make them have a proper day of questioning.

All that crying is sickening. Such a cop out.

They are on a lunch break - back now

Uh-oh. Mr Moloney is going to be questioning Vennells over the Royal Mail prospectus. That's caught a lot of people's attention.

Mr Moloney is very gentle so far in his approach.

It's a long bloody lunchbreak! It is ridiculous. They don't start till 0945 then have a break at 11 ish and then a lunch break that's well over an hour.

I have said it for years for the court service as well. Its such a waste of time and money.

Why not? Aren’t we all equal now?

The prospectus was false and she knew it. Criminal

It's a juicy detail because it could mean the government floated a company on the stock market and it was sold to investors on a deceptive basis. I can see lawyers having fun with that.

Yes. A guy on the radio said that when I was in car