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

We're back to a thread favourite, the board meeting where Susan Crichton was excluded and made to sit outside on the Chair of Naughtiness.

This is staggering.

(July 2013.)

We're back to the same depressing facts that on 16 July 2013 Susan Crichton was excluded from the board meeting meaning the board were to some extent kept in the dark about the seriousness of the briefing Crichton had planned to present.

Massive self-serving explanation from AP about why Susan Crichton had to sit on the Chair of Naughtiness outside the meeting while the board tore her to shreds in the meeting:
JB: "Why isn't that reflected in the minutes [of the board]?"
AP: [pause] "I don't know."

AP is now sniffing a lot.

Yeah what's going on

Beer is talking about that chair again! 🤣🤣🤣

Love it

I thought it had already been established during Vennells' evidence that she didn't present Crichton's briefing paper to the board, but only bits and pieces of it. I wish that could be explored here.

'I think I would have thought ...'

Aye, right, Alice.

AP is completely stuck here. She took the position that the Second Sight report was positive for Post Office and also took the position that the report meant that it exposed Post Office to actions from subpostmasters for wrongful convictions. These are contradictory and she cannot reconcile them.

Is she being deliberately obtuse?

These people cannot miss a chance to praise themselves. "It wasn't my style.... etc. Etc. Etc".

Pure masturbation .... nothing else.

Why aren't they giving Beer Page 6, he's asked 3 times now 🤣

JB,: "Do you think the [Crichton's] paper got entirely overlooked?"

AP strongly denied this but all evidence points to this having happened. All that happened was Vennells cherry-picked a few bits and binned the rest thus hiding it from the board.

AP getting a bit rattled and snappy now.

Why didn't she query the Minutes, then, as the Chair, if the omission was so 'stupid'? She would have signed them off.

Exactly. She thinks she's doing something convincing with her choice of words.

She's doing that to distance herself as if she's not to blame

So now he's talking to her about her criticisms of Susan, I reckon he's gonna thrown in the chair again

Now we're on to AP's issue with Crichton and it coming down to Crichton not having fixed the Second Sight review to get the right answer for Post Office.

That's in AP's own words but she's flatly denying the words she wrote.

Long, rambling self serving account of what "marking" means......

I'm 4 hours behind, but these are my thoughts so far

▪︎ she's a "shoulda, woulda, coulda" person
▪︎ she starts on one path, gets evidence that didn't happen, then contradicts herself
▪︎ is treating this Inquiry like its a bit of a nuisance and small inconvenience to her

Oh and, can't wait for the core participants lawyers tomorrow.

Beer is great, but the other lawyers certainly don't mince their words.

As I see it, he has more or less called her a liar.

Oh god she's now pushing toward 'cock-up not conspiracy' explanation

I agree with her. Cock up fueled by large salaries and bonuses paid to self serving incompetants like her.

If these people were intelligent enough to conspire, then they would probably have been able to run the business.