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

She can't even answer a straight question from Sir Wyn. <sigh>

CIT - she felt she still wasn't getting full information even after the judgement against POL.

Sir Wyn seeks to clarify. She's just repeating his words back at him, really.

'There were clearly issues'. YES KELLY WE BLOODY KNOW THAT.

I'm out at the next break.

Miss Price bravely perseveres with questioning instead of running screaming.

A sudden rush of confidence and self importance in describing her wide portfolio and heaps of responsibility as a minister.

Ooh yes, a very wide portfolio.

We move onto KT's reaction to the Common Issues Judgement and the recusal application.

And lots of responsibility.

Her emphasis.

This is unbearable.

This woman acts slow.

I just checked - Kelly Tolhurst was appointed to the Privy Council in Feb 2022 under Sunak which makes her a 'Right Hon' for life.

(Miss Price the inquiry counsel is referring to her as 'Miss Tolhurst', I've noticed, so the 'Right Hon' honorific is pointless anyway in speech.)

Mr Stein starts his 12 minutes of questions.

Ah. That explains it - you've just solved a mystery for me.

People are kicking off with Johnny Mercer that he has kept his "Right Honorable' title on twitter/X, even though he lost his seat.

I've just checked, and he also was appointed to the Privy Council in Feb 2022 under Sunak.

Mystery solved.

'You know, you know, I'm not a lawyer, you know, they'd caution not to go you know go against legal advice you know ... '

Is this nerves? I have no idea how she normally speaks.

'... but Miss Tolhurst this is the legal advice ...' [that losing the litigation would be catastrophic]

'So it's a failure of the whole system'. She thinks it would have been better if she had had powers of direction at POL. 'I live or die by my sword'. Dear lord above.

She says she should have had powers of direction, but was an expert on nothing and was dependent upon what she was being told and only had limited bandwidth and could only do so much and others will judge whether I was right or wrong. Y' know.

Mr Stein asking about the advices she chose to follow, that she didn't have to.

Sir Wyn checking what she is saying about wanting powers of direction.

'I wanted advice on how I could remove the Chair'

Did ye, aye?

This is hard to follow because KT is not especially fluent. Counsel for Core Participants points out that the minister removing the Chair was not a 'nuclear option' so much as leverage. KT agrees.

Sir Wyn interested in this process and clarifies that KT could have sought the agreement of Sec of State to remove Chair.

No, we were not sold that line. Post Office has never been privatised. It is wholly owned by the government.

Just to clarify, to be right honourable you must be a member of the privy council, which means you are entitled to the honorific for life. An MP who is not a privy councillor is merely honourable.

I must admit to not paying as much attention when it’s broadcasting live rather than watching back after the fact but lately there hasn’t been anyone who I can stand to watch again 😂

I know that I couldn't take much more of Kelly Tolhurst.

Hmm - not quite as compelling as other Witnesses - in terms of getting a 'skewering'; simply because I doubt that many MPs of any flavour or hue would remain completely 'on top' of every single brief and responsibility thrust upon them without a very good team behind them; so I can't feel much more than meh regarding Ms Tolhurst.

To date during this Inquiry, I've heard and seen a gutful of it/shit, how much more can there be? How can anyone forget what happened to all those innocent sub-postmasters, because I certainly can't. And I've not even watched and listened every day.

Thanks again to @nauticant and the many other PPs who have kept me up to date.

Tbf she's still a gibbering fool.

I haven’t had time to catch up with the unbelievable Ken KcCall yet so thank you to everyone on here, especially @nauticant, for the eye-popping commentary, I thought everyone might enjoy something posted in the comments on Nick Wallis's blogpost about yesterday’s dismal testimony - it's Ken McCall's LinkedIn bio:

I provide challenge, strategic insight and support to executive management, acting as a sounding board and a champion for strong governance and stewardship. I help the board to formulate new approaches, to push back and question the status quo. I’m really proud of what we have achieved in a relatively short space of time at the Post Office; highlights include IT transformation and migration of data centres to the cloud, supply chain optimisation and modernisation of the network. Personally, I have learned a lot about how the public sector works and how the government approaches decision-making and priorities compared with listed and private businesses.

All you can say is….WTAF?

Personally, I have learned a lot

Ask not what Ken McCall can do for the Post Office, but what Post Office can do for Ken McCall.

Nick Wallis's write up of McCall and Tolhurst:

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/comical-ken-and-captain-kelly/

I did enjoy the brief sketch of Grabiner.