Paula Vennells was done the other week, the Post Office Inquiry is now questioning associates and others - thread 3

[nauticant]

A continuation of this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5081592-paula-vennels-being-questioned-at-the-post-office-inquiry-followed-by-others-thread-2

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

Paula Vennells knew bloody well what Second Sight was close to unearthing and, according to Mr Henderson, saw not the truth but a threat to the Post Office's business model - a business model driven by PR. [My emphasis]

Henderson: Mark Davies and Paula Vennells were open about it. The Post Office had lost its way. SS were perceived as a threat to the PO's business model.

I think this morning has consolidated just how incompetent and out of their depth the PO was in this matter. We have

• PV "I'm not a lawyer" who preferred to be ignorant and put her hands over her ears singing la-la-la I didn't hear anything - and truly didn't want to hear bad news and wanted to use mediation to fob off the SPMs
• SC - "I'm not a criminal lawyer" who passed everything to the "head of PO criminal law"
• JS 'head of criminal law' - who was utterly clueless (did he really qualify as a lawyer?) and seemed to regard his PO work as a retirement project while he built up his property law business
• added to this the PO were "victim", investigator and prosecutor and also the financial winner (the PO had money "repaid" that was never missing) which gave PO a vested interest in not revisiting the SPMs cases

Mr Henderson would have liked to have been able to 'whistle blow' re evidence of PO prosecutors' misconduct, with those whistle blowing protections.

Warmington in an email asked whether what was going on was "the lawyer tail was wagging the Post Office dog". Quite. That takes us back very much to Grabiner's display of astonishing arrogance the other week.

IH - "It's a cover up ... again"

Ooof.

Incidental and I'm not laughing at the proceedings but some of the captions are giving me a laugh. 'Raw male' for Royal Mail is my favourite so far, I think.

Hehe I find the way that Beer talks to the Head Counsel (forget his name) so cute and endearing haha

Well, that was an illuminating morning. This afternoon should be interesting too.

At the start of Henderson's testimony it became apparent that he was to some degree mixing up what he witnessed at the time and what he's subsequently learned from following the Inquiry. This was underlined by the fact that his very recent witness statement appears to be somewhat "sexed-up" in parts compared to a witness statement he gave in support of the subpostmasters' litigation, the latter being so much closer in time to the relevant events.

This does undercut his evidence to a small degree, which is a shame because even his most moderate version of events is gobsmacking enough.

Quibbling aside, that was a very clear and effective morning of evidence.

It was actually refreshing to hear clear concise answers without all the avoidance and blame passing.

The more I hear of evidence in this enquiry the deeper the sadness for all the innocent people caught up in this travesty.

I'm spending the lunch break going back over some of Jarnail Singh's evidence.

This was a particular corker from him:

“I feel aggrieved about it as much as they [the Subpostmasters he prosecuted] do, probably… even more, because I was in a position to do something and I didn’t.”

Is it worth me going back and watching Singh later. Only just tuned in before the break

The following is a classic from Jarnail Singh's first morning of evidence last year (I believe he has had to give evidence both at the end of last year and a couple of month's ago)

These statements were given about an hour apart, I believe

Jarnail Singh: It was an open-plan office. We had the head of Legal, which was – I’ve forgotten his name now, Hugh Flemington, I think it was, and the director of – or counsel was Susan Crichton. She was a lovely lady, and Hugh, we got on really well.

Jarnail Singh: Yeah, I don’t know any of them. I mean, even Susan Crichton, I have probably met her. I didn’t know her. Certainly – any of them. I mean, Mandy Talbot I know because I think she was in the civil litigation in the same building and Impact House at Croydon. Hugh Flemington, I don’t know who he was. I mean, subsequently when I joined the – the Post Office Limited on 1 April ‘12, I’ve never met him. I don’t know who he was.

It's about ten hours' worth over two days (!), but the highlights are encapsulated here (apols for repeating link), and it's a good starting point if you have 25-30 mins.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/more-singhd-against-than-singh-ing/

ETA: Sorry that was for @Quirkyme

Beware of going down the Jarnaul Singh rabbit hole! It's possible your head might never be the same again.

But if you must:

https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=jarnail+singh+post+office+inquiry

Worth over 10 hours? I meant from this morning really.

There isn't any enquiry showings on Mondays

Ah. I was looking back at the evidence given by Jarnail Singh himself.

He is frequently incoherent.

Ron Warmington up, director of Second Sight. Experienced, senior level auditor, who says that the Post Office reneged on its agreement to provide documents and to be truthful (paraphrasing).

I ended up in an existential crisis, after watching all of Jarnail Singhs testimony.

Is he a lawyer? Does he know if he is a lawyer? Did he actually do any work?
He doesn't know how to print a document, how is that possible?
Am i living in an alternative reality?
Stop the ride, I wanna get off.

The people at the top knew that they were dealing with an existential problem - RW.

I think he is being brought to us via quantum entanglement.

Warmington is less brisk and more expensive than Henderson. He is compelling in pointing out that they only looked at a dozen or so files out of hundreds and even that small sample was riddled with worrying stuff suggesting that there was a vast problem existing in the files they didn't have access to.

SS found 'odd stuff' early on, circa August 2012, in the legal files. 'Evidence of wholly inadequate investigation', in the period before the Post Office started to change its attitude and close them down.