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

I went down a total rabbit-hole watching Elaine Cottam last night after your post, @Ruperims. Good heavens. I just….don't know where to start. It takes forgetfulness to a whole new level. 'I don’t remember that. AT ALL' is branded indelibly on my brain now. Mr Beer dealt with her with exemplary patience but I sensed he was seething below the surface.

I had to go to Nick Wallis's blog and he reacted with similar incredulity, but added a note to say that so many people had wondered whether she was in the first stages of dementia that he’d actually contacted the Inquiry to lodge the suggestion with them. However, in the comments it was repeatedly noted that, for all her seeming unawareness about how many branches she’d managed, whether she’d written or signed a witness statement, or whether she could even remember the decade some events had taken place, she zeroed in with laser-like speed to insinuate (with no evidence whatsoever) that the husband of one of the accused SPMs might have been responsible for the problems encountered. There certainly didn’t seem to be any memory issues then.

I'm genuinely baffled as to whether she was displaying the effects of some form of brain injury or whether it was the most childishly extreme and worst-acted refusal to co-operate with the Inquiry.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/gareth-jenkins-day-2-the-god-complex-unravels/

I didn't watch it but reading that about the highlighted paragraphs I lost sympathy with the position that he's a techy who had no idea what was going on...

Now, when GJ says that he doubts he's ever seen a document, I find myself instinctively not believing him. That's the fall-out from his day of messy testimony yesterday.

Maybe I'm a soft touch but Jason Beer here seems to be suggesting that GJ would have needed to have provided an enormous amount of work detailing everything that he'd ever encountered in the Horizon system about it not working as expected. GJ was in a bind, he viewed the scope of that as being too much, and so I think he interpreted what was needed (overly) narrowly.

I think this is also about communications and expectations between two very different worlds, legal and technical.

I'm struggling to follow this in any way shape or form today. Would you care to provide a 'for dummies' guide @nauticant 😂

Effectively it's an examination about whether Post Office, as helped by GJ, looked deeply enough into what happened at the West Byfleet sub post office, that is the one Seema Misra ran. Did they check everything in order to make sure all of the stages in transactions at that sub post office showed that there wasn't a problem on the part of Horizon meaning they could argue that Seema Misra had committed theft?

Thanks 👍 that all makes sense now. I nearly need them to be using hand puppets at this stage 😬

GJ is reminding me more and more of someone at a place where I used to work. Published the definitive guide on an incredibly niche subject. Kept a database which only he could use and interpret, so everyone who needed any information about it had to go to him. When he retired, they had to bring him back on a consultancy basis because nobody could make head or tail of his database.

Bit on evil genius there wasn't he!

There's also the issue that in the case, Post Office, as helped by GJ, were aware of a broader range of bugs, errors, and defects, but did not disclose this. Had Seema Misra been provided with this information, her lawyers would have been able to run a much stronger defence based on the unreliability of Horizon which would have giving her a much better chance to have been found not guilty.

GJ is reminding me more and more of someone at a place where I used to work. Published the definitive guide on an incredibly niche subject. Kept a database which only he could use and interpret, so everyone who needed any information about it had to go to him. When he retired, they had to bring him back on a consultancy basis because nobody could make head or tail of his database.

The cutaway to the lawyers showed Seema Misra sat next to her counsel Flora Page.

Apologies for double post

Internal email exchange within Fujitsu where, having become aware of an integrity problem, they suppressed that knowledge rather than disclose it to Post Office as was the original intention.

He says 'it never occurred to me ' quite a bit doesn't he. At what point does that show you up as incompetent? There just seems to have been so much arse covering across Fujitsu and PO, it's like they weren't all that bothered to get the thing fixed. It's astounding.

Oh god - Elaine Cottam! My youtube rolled over to her testimony during the lunch break last week so I watched the first hour O M G! It was horrifically fascinating.

JB had to work really hard for the most miniscule admissions from her ... she would not even agree the gentle opening questions about her work history ... like the dates she worked at the PO ... the jobs she did.

At one point she claimed not to remember the dates she worked a particular job ... JB pointed out that she had given dates in a witness statement many years earlier and asked if the inquiry could assume they were correct at the date she swore to them .... but she argued with JB at them and he was tearing his hair out just trying to get basic agreed facts,

I must go back and watch the whole thing

You'll lose half a day, Lunde. If you’re anything like me you’ll be hypnotised by the sheer horror of it.

JB pointed out that she had given dates in a witness statement many years earlier and asked if the inquiry could assume they were correct at the date she swore to them .... but she argued with JB at them and he was tearing his hair out just trying to get basic agreed facts

When she said she didn’t remember a particular year ('AT ALL') I did have to laugh - slightly hysterically - at his 'but do you remember the decade?'

JB really needling him now.

He keeps ignoring the question actually being asked when he speaks.

Bandwagon wasn’t my choice of word, I’d seen/hear others using it so I did too. So, you jumped on the bandwagon, bandwagon did you ? Just wanted to join in with trashing the SubPMs. Grrrrr

Unaware of so many things but not the political (with a small p) niceties of the relationship between Fujitsu and POL.

He said on Monday he wasn’t aware of the difference between Civil and Criminal cases. Does he live in the real world or just in Techie world?

'apologies for picking it apart' 😂

Ha! In his line, people 'picking apart' what you say and do is very much part of the job. As he should have been doing to others.

It was JBs tone that amused me. It was like an eyeroll without the actual eyeroll

When are they back from this break?

I missed what time, sorry.