Paula Vennells is history but now at the Post Office Inquiry is Fujitsu distinguished engineer Gareth Jenkins - thread 4

[nauticant]

A continuation of this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5094266-paula-vennells-was-done-the-other-week-the-post-office-inquiry-is-now-questioning-associates-and-others-thread-3

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

It is fascinating that time and time again people who are new to this arrive, say "but what if the SPMs are right?" and they are assured by PO that Horizon is robust, and it sort of goes away. DeGare-Robinson for instance did this, as did others. I think it's a combination of not being able to look any further or wanting to or having the technical understanding so that hearing "no systemic errors" seems reassuring

This is a great insight into what happened when the board got to grips with the Common Issues judgment. Again, Cooper goes back to the legal team wanting to appeal everything irrespective of the merits, and even if that would be unreasonable.

It lays bare Post Office's fundamental strategy: appeal until the bitter end because it only had to win once and the subpostmasters have given up.

Deep in the detail of the agonising by the Civil Service over what to do about the recusal application, which everyone on that side was against.

I think counsel to the Inquiry, Catriona Hodge, has got this wrong and that Cooper's version is simply more plausible, that he was being warned off from making clear what everyone around him felt: that making the recusal application was a bad idea, and he didn't, in fact, have freedom to intervene.

Second break of the morning.

To make that clearer, counsel seems to be pushing a narrative that Cooper should have intervened against recusal, and Cooper is trying to counter that with him reading the Civil Service messaging at the time as being that he shouldn't, and he knew that if he had and it had blown up in everyone's face, he obviously would have been hung out to dry.

This comes across as Cooper having to instruct counsel in how to read Mandarin-speak including reading between the lines. I get what he's saying, and I think that Inquiry counsel does too, but she's sorting of playing dumb.

Getting a bit juicy now 😬

Henry KC spinning documents to place malicious motivations in Cooper's head in 2020. I'm finding Cooper more plausible here. But let's see how this plays out.

He seems confident enough in his motivations alright

Rodric Williams sounds like a right charmer ...

I'm glad the counsel(s) are testing Tom Cooper's credibility in detail. Has to be done.

Cooper adamant he wasn't questioning what the SPM claimants were saying, he was questioning what POL was saying.

Henry KC ends on what is Cooper's main weakness. He was early in seeing some of the fundamental problems in how things were being handled by Post Office, had strong views on them, but allowed himself to be fobbed off and gave up raising things that needed challenging.

Mr Stein now.

Jane MacLeod back in the frame.

Speak up woman!

Sir Wyn Williams sounding grumpy there about a late, and incomplete, break for lunch. Was firm about ending today no later than 16.30.

Thank you for the coverage. I've been unable to watch for a while.

Should be resuming shortly.

She's swallowing her words again, which are soft-spoken to begin with. I've cranked the volume right up now.

I have the laptop at it's highest but really struggling to hear her.

I've had to resort to using my specialist headphones.

Next up is Patrick O’Sullivan. There's next to no commentary about him on the web so unless he's some kind of super dark horse figure, this morning might have been the highlight of the day's evidence.

Some corrections to his statement.

Now into his expertise. Used to be a director and vice-chair / deputy chair of big financial institutions e.g. Zurich and Bank of England. Then moved into non-executive (NED) roles. Had lots of roles, lots of time commitments.

From March 2012, O'Sullivan was Chair of ShEx Board of POL.

Bank of Ireland would have been in monumental shit at that time. Hard to believe he wasn't devoting all his time to it tbh.

He left ShEx in 2014. So he was around at the right time and place to have seen some interesting things. Basically he was wearing a zillion non-exec hats and it wouldn't be surprising if he didn't have a deep understanding of what was going on at Post Office.

Question as to whether he was able to put the time in?

PO'S says he stepped down in Sept 2014 from ShEx when he needed to spend more time on Old Mutual, another of his big commitments.