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

"Wild idea I know, but Paula Vennels is coming over so utterly clueless that I'm starting to wonder if she might just be a scapegoat for much bigger people in the organisation?"

That's what she wants you to think. To sow the seed that she might actually be a bit simple. Innocent little woman with her blinking and her mouth hanging open. Don't fall for it.

Been watching back on YouTube in the evenings but been following comments on here during the day.

Knew that last email would be "good" (read car crash tv) but holy 💩💩💩....! My mouth was agape through the whole thing. Wtaf is she on?

And saying Jo Hamilton lacked passion - she's sat right in front of you, she's seeing it through for all her colleagues and not just that but she's doing with it a dignity you can only dream of!!! 😡😡😡

Not that I for a second imagine Jo is in here but if she ever sees this - big virtual hug from me!

And then PV is going through her witness statement, she's got to this even by her reluctant admission horrendous email she's got time, she's written 774 other pages and the bits she highlights to feel sorry about are "unhelpful and inaccurate" and "bored more than outraged"... not the vile personal attacks levied at Jo or the fact she pats Mark what's his face on the back for doing so well when she's now saying lifestyle problems was the worst thing anyone could ever say🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

I posted earlier on this thread that having watched a few of the sessions pre the Paula ones that I was staggered by the incompetence. I’ve now changed my mind. I think they are all lying. I think Paula is definitely lying.

The only exception I’ve seen so far is Alasdair Cameron.

It never fails to astonish me how many people continue to fall for the pillar of the community/upright man or woman of the cloth smokescreen with these types of people. That woman damaged so many others. I have no sympathy for her whatsoever and no truck with her pathetic crocodile tears either.

I think she is representative of a class, and felt herself to be one of them, but, although she is clever, she was not as clever as her fellows, and so didn't spot that while they could get away with all sorts, she was in an different type of organisation and was playing by a different set of rules, ie backed and supported by the government and being not held to account (for a period) while her organisation destroyed lives, but with political accountability waiting in the wings.

She might have got away with it. But it went too far and for her it went beyond redemption, for someone lacking a true moral core, strong leadership skills, and courage.

It’s bizarre. It’s no wonder she loves the church too. The exact same sense of corporate cover up, everything is perfect masking, loving the organisation and the hierarchy more than people or genuine values. ‘I loved the post office’ may be the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard. Almost as if she saw it as a church, something holy, and horizon could do no wrong, the electronic son of corporate godheads. The fact that she kept saying she didn’t have the technical or legal expertise to know about the issues is a joke. It was nothing to do with technical or legal expertise. ANY tech system can go wrong and you don’t need tech expertise to know that. Can you imagine if our bank accounts started missing money and the banks just said tough, you stole it, it’s not possibly a bug, off to jail with you?!

I've just watched the bit where her email about Jo Hamilton was read out and she said ‘oh I deeply agree and I apologise for being so rude about you in that email.’ Doesn’t she realise that she’s the one - not Jo Hamilton - who’s made to look despicable and contemptible by that email? That her apology is completely meaningless? Apart from anything else, calling Jo passionless is hilarious since Vennells has about as much passion (and charisma) as a dead fish. It beggars belief, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.

Probably clutching at straws but it would be great if Jo could sue her for defamation due to the “false accounting” remark in that email…

You are absolutely right about the "I love the post office" comment. I think that was the most honest thing we saw. I've seen it in Universities, people who came to a prestigious academic institution as an 18 year old and never left. They absolutely love their college because it gave them a place in the world. Some of these people do become great scholars and teachers, who inspire future generations of young academics.

Unfortunately others become self serving pompous arseholes with an over inflated sense of their own worth.

That's something that has always annoyed me too, all of a sudden after years and years of paper accounting and unannounced audits a new computer system is installed and woah massive theft is going on which was never uncovered previously? Either the auditors were shit and missed it previously in which case they heed to be held accountable or there is something amiss in the computer systems recording.

The other thing that has me exasperated is the mantra insisting that Horizon was infallible, robust, no issues whatsoever. NO computer software programme is immune to bugs, not one. The bugs come to light as people use the system. How many times have bug fixes been done on Microsoft or Apple or on Banking software on ANY software/computer programme? Huge numbers of people are employed and earn damn good money finding and sorting out bugs. PV's computer literate husband could surely have told her this ffs.

Yep, that is the only conclusion I can come to - and explains their horrific treatment of the SPM's, the automatic assumption 'you're guilty as fuck and we don't care what you say'.

A very snotty, patronising attitude to their employees, considering this still must have been a sudden change in figures (as I assume they would not have been losing such sums on a regular basis without investigating it pre Horizon)... 'you're all just dirty thieves...'

What I was talking about in my post above is that Post Office Limited has a single shareholder, a government-controlled entity called ShEx, and so long as Vennells could keep them on board, she could continue to operate with considerably greater freedom than her fellows in charge of comparable-sized companies in the private sector. So, how to keep ShEx on board? Well, she had that in the bag, her boss and best mate was Jack Straw's wife and her beloved PR guy was Jack Straw's ex-spindoctor. (The Labour party was out of government but there was clearly a large amount of residual power and still a great network of political contacts in place.)

The problem with this is that if the wind changed, she would be far more exposed to an adverse political climate than her fellows in the private sector. But she assumed that that wouldn't happen, all she needed to do was to keep a lid on the difficult and noisy subpostmasters problem.

She let it slip today when pressed on whether she had preferenced the needs of the Post Office over everything else. She broke down and said she'd loved the post office. It's as simple as that in the end. She was so blinkered and so obsessed with protecting the Post Office's reputation and its return to commercial viability, that she completely discounted all the evidence that Horizon was the problem. She clung to her deluded belief that the sub postmasters were light fingered liars and was part of a wider self reinforcing corporate culture of refusing to accept any responsibility for what had happened.

Those tears and "I love the Post Office" are twanging something in my memory...

Can't place it, but some character, real or fictional, saying, "You'll never know what I've done for you..." as they die or are carted off.

And the object of their devotion is puzzled and worried, because dreadful things have happened and people have died.

And it transpires the devotee has done these terrible things to, as the devotee saw it, "protect" the object of their devotion. Indeed the devotee feels heroic, that they were the only one brave enough to have done these difficult things, out of love...

Now what film is that from?

True love. The post office had given her everything she wanted in life. Wealth, power, status, influence, a sense of identity (most important in my opinion) .... why would she not love the post office?

That's something that has always annoyed me too, all of a sudden after years and years of paper accounting and unannounced audits a new computer system is installed and woah massive theft is going on which was never uncovered previously? Either the auditors were shit and missed it previously in which case they heed to be held accountable or there is something amiss in the computer systems recording.

@PlacidPenelope I think it's a sort of confirmation bias - they thought the robbing had gone on for years and they were finally catching it, they blinded themselves to any logical thought beyond that and congratulated each other on a job well done. I agree that to anyone outside the organisation it's gobsmacking.

@PlacidPenelope The critical detail on the bugs which doesn't excuse her but rather reveals a lot about the sort of cover-uppy, non-questioning culture she embodied, was that there are a few moments when she said that once some bugs were brought to light, because she was reassured by others that the issues they had given rise to had been identified and dealt with, that meant the system generally wasn't one beset by bugs. What is truly bonkers - and Alistair Cameron said as much in his testimony - is that at no point did anyone, especially PV, seem at this point to stop and say - well, maybe that's the tip of the iceberg and at the very least we should go back and double triple check that there wasn't anything buggy behind the other cases, including the ones that have led to convictions. Nope - she was told that ok, there WERE in fact some bugs, but they were all small, and dealt with. And she just accepted that! And moreover, that sort of rolled into a continued belief that there were somehow "no bugs", as if "some bugs that we think we've dealt with" was basically the same as "no bugs". It's a really slippery thought process that I can only assume is rooted in a determined desire to see no evil.

@Sceptic1234 I completely agree about the universities comments. The only reason why the staff, both academic & support, stay so long is because they'd struggle to be employed elsewhere. It's quite a unique atmosphere where staff become so reliant on the HE structure, almost like the way fish requires water to survive.

Another thing that has really struck me through all of this is that I don't feel I've seen a single instance where she actually took a stance and exercised executive judgment or power. Now, I appreciate a CEO must consult their team on key issues. A dictatorship would be just as bad but in the other direction. But at no moment does she seem to have sought advice, but then decided to act against it, or sought advice, received conflicting advice and made a decision. She always seems to have asked other people what to do/what she should do, and just done it.

Now I appreciate that is in part a strategy to distance herself before the inquiry from the decisions made - "I just acted on the advice of x, it isn't my fault". But it isn't JUST that, at least from the communications we've seen. I can't see any instance where she says anything like, "I hear your view but I don't agree, I think we need to ..."

So what on earth was she paid for??! She was just a conduit for the team around her, there's no sense she had any views herself, any ability to see that her team's judgement might ever be clouded by their personal interests or perspectives...

The only times when she seemed to be properly engaged was when she was playing mean girls with Alice Perkins behind the scenes.

On a separate note, it's good to see Alisdair Cameron getting some positive commentary on the thread. Maybe in real life he's the worst person in the world, but he might be the only person who I watched give evidence from Post Office where I thought, "gosh, is this someone who was willing to look with some objectivity and critically at what was in front of him?"

@nauticant Agreed, and I may be a poor judge of demeanor but everything about his tone and attitude came across as more frank and more honest than anything from PV. His willingness to enter into true self-scrutiny and organisational criticism, and his willingness to admit that mistakes were made and to pinpoint them, rather than PV's pathetic bleating of "I didn't know" or "I did what I thought was right" was simply a whole different ball game.

The thing that puzzled me was that if the programme was glitchy or had faults why were they always in favour of the post office (ie the subpostmasters had to pay from their own money) ....if there were random errors why weren't there a number of accounts where the amount shown was much lower than accounted for?

But also while I absolutely think Paula Vennells carries much of the responsibility and is being rightly held to account, her name has been linked and publicised far more so than either her predecessor or successor, both of whom held the position while the scandal was unravelling. Or anyone at horizon or Fujitsu?? The horizon helpline was fobbing off people left right and centre telling them thry were the only one. Who authorised that script and clearly knew it was an ongoing and widespread problem....?

Erm. Game of thrones?! Wild stab in the dark 😆

Think I missed that bit

I also thought the crying showed a tremendous lack of dignity in a mature professional woman who was patently crying for herself and not attempting to compose herself until told to by Jason Beer. I admit I’m not much of a crier but I find it very unprofessional AND disingenuous. I also noted the flash of anger in her eyes immediately after she ‘loved the post office‘ and someone (inaudible) heckled her. THEN she started bawling. Screwing her face up like a red faced child. Extraordinary. Awful.

Spot on. I agree