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

On second thoughts maybe more of a Bernard Woolley than a Sir Humphrey Appleby.

Callard is at least willing to admit that on all of the significant issues discussed at board level he was content to accept what had been summarised by Post Office, the important underlying documents weren't provided, and he didn't ask to see them. Seems like any active curiosity, of the kind fundamental to his role, was lacking.

Unless there's going to be a major change of pace, today's going to be a day of providing more complete background to th picture of ShEx being ineffectual and asleep in its role with Post Office.

The impression one gets from this week's evidence is that ShEx/UKGI put considerable evidence into creating the risk register, and making it pretty (as much as a management tool can be pretty), but this didn't then carry on into relevant action. Like the risk register was an endpoint in itself. I assume that a pretty risky register was in someone's targets for their yearly review.

Isn't that always the way with these things though? When I was in public service, there'd be endless working groups (and lunches) to come up with something like this, a 'launch', and the thing was never heard about again. We used to call them 'dogs on skateboards' but I completely forget why 😂

Ahh, so Susannah Storey was the senior Civil Servant in place when the shit hit the fan, the Second Sight interim report, Callard arrived when this had faded into the background with complacency having set in, and his successor Copper arrived for the following shit/fan incident, the civil litigation.

So Callard was in place during the complacency/containment/cover-up phase and his lack of curiosity and don't-rock-the-boat attitude made him perfect for the time and the place.

dogs on skateboards

An eye-catching and thus distracting spectacle that's actually pointless.

Makes sense, thank you. We had many of them. And sandwiches 🥪

The most important issue when trapped In the maze of endless meetings: will there be sandwiches and will there be biscuits? And, particularly, how good will they be? During one period of good company profits, we had a regularly recurring early morning meeting fueled by bacon sandwiches. The company's fortunes subsequently declined, although I'm not sure whether to link the two.

I wonder would that hold up in front of an inquiry 😁 'it was the crap sambos Mr Beer' 😂

Great. So Callard moved to prevent Jo Swinson from receiving a copy of the Second Sight report, seemingly because to have learned that part of the story would have compromised Swinson's independence as minister responsible. In effect, it might have broken her out of the narrative that suited everyone.

Ridiculous. Back to 'should know ' Vs 'need to know '.

'what is wrong with the CEO'. Ouch!!!

There's an effective trick Jason Beer has used several times now. He'll point to a document where Callard is tipping off Post Office about an upcoming Post Office - ministerial interaction, Callard will waffle on explaining it away, and then Beer will ask whether Callard also gave a corresponding tip-off to the minister. This stumps Callard every time.

These interactions then tend to get a follow-up of Beer asking "and which hat were you wearing?".

Seems like Baroness Neville-Rolfe might be an interesting witness. She'd rumbled that Civil Servants were trying to lead her down the garden path and tried to find her own way out of the shenanigans.

Forgive my ignorance but is she a member of the house of lords? Do they have much actual power? We have two houses in Ireland but the senate (the upper one) wouldn't have a huge amount of power.

I've come across completely pointless risk registers in the private sector. A risk register is only useful if people do something about it.

I remember being involved with a large business where the risk register noted that a number of servers being used to run software that was essential to the company's services were old and in danger of hardware failure. The software needed extensive reworking before it could be moved to new servers. This was raised as a major risk. The manager in charge of the development team that would carry out the work was clear that there weren't enough developers to do this work as well as deal with paid-for work from customers. He therefore, armed with the risk register, asked for more developers. The COO said no and stated clearly that the developers were only to do paid-for work, not risk mitigation. A few months later one of the servers failed, causing major disruption. No prizes for guessing who got sacked - in case you need a clue, it wasn't the COO. After this, those who had been looking after the risk register gave up on it. The business concerned subsequently collapsed into administration.

That's pretty awful!

Not much power as such, although as a peer more, I suspect, than you or me, but having been elevated to the lords as a result of achievements, and then being respected enough to be appointed as a minister and to have a position in the Cabinet, I'd expect her to be well connected and influential.

Another derogatory dismissal from one of those involved of Jo Hamilton. (It seems that Post Office really disliked her for not giving up and disappearing for good into a dark corner, and this dislike affected everyone involved on that "side".) Jason Beer neatly brushed Callard's apology aside.

What a fucking Muppet! Read the room like! Idiot. It was all either before or after his time anyway. He essentially knows nothing.

It was an unnecessary thing to include in the email and I read it simply as Callard signalling he was "one of us".

If you're a minister I assume you have some power at least? I have only a cursory knowledge of the English system, but still see enough on the news etc. I must read up. Nobody wants to admit to having had power here anyway, it was all very much someone else's problem. It must be completely soul destroying for the victims having to listen to them all tying themselves in knots to pretend they knew nothing, while their livelihoods were going up in flames. It's sickening.

Jo and her evil eye should at least make the prick feel very uncomfortable.

Oh dear. Callard in email correspondence with Mark Davies showing he was on board with Post Office against the JFSA.

Callard has decided his best option here is to lie through his teeth even though he knows no one believes a word he's saying. This is shameful.

'the dog ate my homework Miss'

I like this woman!