The Post Office Scandal

The letter came from Andrew Parsons sent jointly to David Oliver (Bond Dickson) and Chris Aujard dated 12th March, 2014.  NOTE however the email starts Dear CHRIS...

(Note contained in the letter was reference to the Project Sparrow Steering Group)

The subject heading of the letter was Advice for Linklaters

Post Office bosses secretly decided in April 2014 to sack forensic accountants who had found bugs in their IT system, documents obtained by the BBC show.

They also reveal the government had knowledge of the decision, taken by a Post Office board sub-committee, codenamed "Project Sparrow".

Post Office bosses kept insisting their systems were robust.

But they made a concession following pressure from MPs, offering to set up a mediation scheme to deal with what they said was a small number of cases.

The documents reveal the Post Office planned to pay a total of only £1m in "token payments", or compensation, to sub-postmasters as it suppressed evidence of computer bugs in 2014.

The secret plan to sack Second Sight is revealed in the minutes of two Project Sparrow meetings in April 2014.

The Project Sparrow sub-committee was led by Post Office chair Alice Perkins and included chief executive Paula Vennells, alongside the Post Office's most senior internal lawyer, general counsel Chris Aujard, and Richard Callard, a senior civil servant at UK Government Investments, then a division of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The unredacted minutes for 9 April 2014 show the sub-committee asking for a paper to be prepared on the role of Second Sight and "options to support them or reduce their role".

Three weeks later, on 30 April 2014, they agree on a plan to bring the investigation of sub-postmasters' cases "within the control of the Post Office", removing Second Sight from its role of investigating sub-postmasters' cases independently.

However, that decision was kept secret from Parliament and the public as the Post Office claimed Second Sight's independent review supported its approach to sub-postmasters' complaints. The Post Office was then seeking to defuse the scandal through a mediation scheme, which excluded many victims from compensation.

Nine months before the committee met, Second Sight submitted a report on 8 July 2013 identifying computer bugs that raised doubts over the reliability of Horizon data used to prosecute sub-postmasters.

A week later, on 15 July 2013, the Post Office was warned in formal advice written by its own lawyer Simon Clarke that it was in breach of its legal duties because sub-postmasters who had been prosecuted should have been told about the bugs.

The next day, 16 July 2013, the Post Office board expressed concern that Second Sight's review exposed the business to claims of wrongful convictions.

Yet the Project Sparrow minutes from April 2014 show Paula Vennells, Alice Perkins and the other members discussed closing or speeding up the mediation scheme and planning to pay minimal compensation to sub-postmasters.

That followed advice from lawyers Linklaters that they had only "very limited liability in relation to financial redress".

The minutes show the committee asking for a paper to brief them on making "token payments" to sub-postmasters applying to the mediation scheme, trumpeted in public at the time by ministers as a solution to sub-postmasters' complaints.

"The cost of all cases in the scheme going to mediation would be in the region of £1m," the unredacted minutes state.

Members of the committee knew sub-postmasters wouldn't be happy and that there was a "real risk" that "many applicants will remain dissatisfied at the end of the process".

On 30 April 2014, following advice from Chris Aujard, the committee decided not to make any "ex gratia" payments - meaning payments to struggling sub-postmasters to help them while their cases were examined.

They also asked for a paper to be prepared on options for closing or speeding up the mediation scheme.

Second Sight's interim report in 2013 did say that it had found no systemic flaws in the Horizon system. But the word "systemic" had a specific meaning - that no flaws could be found in every single post office branch.

The following year, in March 2015, as it prepared to submit its full report, 11 months after the decision had been taken, Second Sight's contract was terminated and the Post Office brought investigation of the sub-postmasters' cases in-house.

Full article here -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68079300


Andrew Parsons

Solicitor advising Post Office warned about leaving 'paper trail'

Parsons is also the bloke who give this advice too -

A lawyer acting for the Post Office advised the organisation in an email not to leave a ‘paper trail’ as reports started coming in that the Horizon system was faulty.

The Post Office Inquiry yesterday saw correspondence between Andrew Parsons, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, Post Office general counsel Susan Crichton and head of corporate finance Charles Colquhoun in 2013.

Responding to a draft letter for the Post Office’s insurance broker about the IT system, Parsons said the letter ‘does nothing more than put POL’s insurers on notice of the Horizon issues’.

His response continued: ‘My own hesitation is whether this is strictly necessary to do. From a PR perspective it would look bad if this got into the public domain – sign of guilt/concern from the board.’

Parsons suggested the Post Office ‘hold fire’ on notifying insurers there may be issues with Horizon and recommended ‘tweaking’ the letter to say that the press had reported on potential issues with Horizon, rather than that financial discrepancies had occurred with the system.

Parsons later emailed saying that the risk of notification was that it would ‘look bad for POL if it ever became public knowledge that POL notified its insurers’. He recommended that the Post Office speak to its insurers rather than send a formal written notice ‘so as not to leave a paper trail’.


https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/solicitor-advising-post-office-warned-about-leaving-paper-trail/5119330.article


Belinda Crowe

The woman who sent the email in December about PI (professional Indemnity) and other personal insurance is probably better known to you as this woman...

Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe): Sir Humphrey would be proud

Belinda Cortes-Martin had a dual role. Whilst she was supposedly heading up the Post Office’s Complaint and Mediation Scheme’s Working Group secretariat, supporting and answering to the Working Group’s independent Chair, Sir Anthony Hooper (a retired Court of Appeal judge), Cortes-Martin was also Programme Director for Project Sparrow, the top secret Post Office body set up to control the Complaint and Mediation Scheme (CMS), run by the Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells.

If you think I’m over-egging how secret Project Sparrow was, during the High Court litigation in 2018, the Post Office tried to claim the very word Sparrow was legally privileged and couldn’t be used in court, a concept Mr Justice Fraser said he was “struggling with”, despite letting it go. I am not sure even Second Sight or the Working Group knew of Project Sparrow’s existence. Cortes-Martin did, though.

It seems that whilst the Working Group may have thought of Cortes-Martin as, at most, a neutral party, she was, in fact a conduit of information from the Working Group (WG) back to the Project Sparrow gang (Bond Dickinson’s Andy Parsons, Vennells, Chris Aujard, Rodric Williams, Mark Davies and Angela van den Bogerd).

Full article here -
https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/belinda-cortes-martin-crowe-sir-humphrey-would-be-proud/


Fwiw it seems to me that Project Sparrow WORKING GROUP OF OFFICERS are essential the gatekeepers that I have referred to many times in all this, who have basically kept the government and PO Board more or less completely in the dark.

The Project Sparrow WORKING GROUP fed into the Project Sparrow SUB COMMITTE which include Alice Perkins (Chair of the PO Board) and Richard Callard (the government representative on the PO Board) see above paragraph highlighted in green.

I'm uncertain if Perkins and Callard were fully in the know about everything but the revelation that Vennells got involved with removing reference to Horizon from the Royal Mail prospectus because Callard had failed and Vennells made reference of doing so on her (in effect) self appraisal to Perkins, suggest they weren't pure in all of this to my way of thinking.

I certainly do not believe however (and have never had been) that The Powers That Be had their hands all over this from the very start in 1999.

Lady B's glued to watching the Post Office hearings on Youtube at least as much as I am so, when Monday's hearing was cancelled, I popped into Waterstones to get a copy of Nick Wallis's book for us both.

The book is quite lengthy and begins with a detailed description of what a useless pile of sh*t Horizon was known to be and how it was foisted on to the Post Office by Tony Blair's government.  You might easily conclude that government policy on this, as well as quite a lot of other things, was 'light the blue touchpaper and stand well clear'.


Not to mention 'spin, spin and spin again', of course

Here we go again, another recruit with memory recall issues via the 'twerps r us' agency. Horizon was rolled out to a dubious Post Office and its unsuspecting SPMs whilst Jack Straw was Home Secretary c.1999.

The upshot was that hundreds of SPMs were prosecuted for non-existent shortfalls or made to pay up non-existent debts; some committed suicide, some were imprisoned.

When Mrs Straw (aka Alice Perkins) was appointed Post Office chairman in 2011, the partner responsible for the Post Office audit told her that Horizon was a big problem. She didn't seem to ask how long it had been a problem but apparently thought that it could just be treated it as though it was the auditor's problem not hers.

Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just a note for myself.

I'm watching (not live) a recording of todays inquiry with Perkins and it is at a point where Perkin has left Crichton outside the Board meeting.

Beer is probing why Crichton did so and and why Vennells then had to present her (Crichton's) legal report,

There was some talk about the Clarke advice which was sent to Crichton the day before and Perkins mused that she didn't even know if Crichton had even read it before the meeting she ended up sitting outside of.

Beer replies she hadn't in fact it sat in Crichton drawer for twelve days before she read it. (roughly 1 hour 8 mins into the afternoon session).

I'm fairly sure Crichton had said she told Vennells outside the meeting on that day of the Clarke report - Vennells had said she had not.

Seems Vennells was telling the truth on this point.

And Crichton was not prevented about telling the board about the unsafe prosecution witness of the PO (Gethin Jenkins) also at that point.

Why didn't she, and/or Vennells or Perkins tell the board when each became aware of the fact?

EDIT - further into the video Beer talks about Crichton telling Vennells that there would be many claims against the PO due to wrongful prosecutions - maybe that is what I was thinking about based on the Clarke advise - BUT maybe she had said this independently of Clarke - as her report before the board talked of 5% wrongful prosecutions.

Perkins denies that Vennells told her about this (Vennells had dined Crichton had told her outside the meeting in the first place).


FURTHER EDIT - BEER NOW ADMITS HE GOT IT WRONG - it was the SECOND Clarke advice (shredding documents) that sat in a drawer for 12 days.

FFS!!!

Basically ignore this post and return to the original mind set on this.

Fwiw the last bit of the post above came immediately prior to the afternoon break.

I mention this BECAUSE BEER WAS ONCE AGAIN SUGGESTING THAT IT WAS THE PO EXECTIVES (Vennells, etc) WHO WERE HIDING THEIR 'DIRTY LAUNDRY' AWAY FROM PERKINS, THE PO BOARD AND THE GOVERNMENT SHARE HOLDER...

Go and view it yourself Bob as that is what I've been suggesting was more likely to have happened all along!

Well I found it a bit of a mixed bag today.

It started out as the senior external auditor saying there was a BIG issue over PO prosecutions which Perkins seemed to do absolutely nothing about (????) and ended with Beer almost making the case for Perkins to look like she had been played big time by Vennells et al, who kept her clear of all knowledge of the shit they had caused themselves (and the numerous life's they had already wrecked).

It ended on a bit of a cliff hanger where Vennells had informed her of the unsafe expert witness but also told her that there was nothing to worry about though!

I'm beginning to think Perkins is a clever woman (she wouldn't have risen so high in the Civil Service if she wasn't) but wasn't able to transfer her skills into the private sector way of working - I know I find it a different beast to the one I know from my years in the public sector.

She did however seem to have a massive downer on Crichton?

I wonder if Vennells had whispered poison in her ear about her or something?

Either way she stopped Crichton spilling the beans to the board at the most crucial of times - and nothing since seemed to ever goy close to the board aver again until the High Court judgement.

Perkins seems to say the right things - she notes the auditors concern about prosecutions but seemingly doesn't follow it up (???) - she reasons that one answer could be to get the CPS do the job but never tells anyone to get the ball rolling, she knows stuff like the Clark advise should be put to the board but isn't aware it has been kept from her - and even when she's finally told by Vennells late one night she misses the importance of it because Vennells also tells her it isn't a problem!

Maybe there's more to come out tomorrow and from other witness yet but it seems pretty clear to me at least that Beer is of a mind that the 'gatekeepers' of Vennells et al have kept her in the dark and as such the board and the government rep who sits on the board.

The evidence of the last few weeks has mostly concentrated on events between 2010 and 2013 when the Post Office had a new Board in place. They seem to have imagined that they were running the show but one might wonder whether they were capable of running a bath.

But the stark reality was that the goose had been well and truly cooked well before any of them arrived on the scene.

Bob, you are one dimensional on this.

The organisation needed to be computerised and brought into the current world in order to exist.

I can tell you from personal experience from the late nineties that the public sector was concerned all about cost and not about quality - and I have zero surprise that the computer system contained bugs and these caused users problems - it was happening in all public sector organisations throughout the country.

The big difference here being Royal Mail had the power to prosecute its own employees.

Tbh I don't even believe there would have been much difference initially if the CPS had prosecuted instead as the issue of wrongful convictions only became apparent when Gareth Jenkins (the father of the Horizon system) let it be known that there WAS indeed remote access to Horizon.

I would have imagined if CPS were doing the prosecutions then that would have quickly become apparent because the PO DIDN'T train Jenkins about the need for FULL disclosure when giving evidence.

Iirc (and I may not be?) I believe that someone at Royal Mail rewrote his witness statement to remove mention of remote access to Horizon?

Anyway it seems the Royal Mail used this written evidence in all cases up to it becoming known that there WAS remote access and (again I may be wrong?) that only came about when Jenkins himself told Second Sight.

(It was KNOWN prior to that by Post Office employees as one of them had attended a meeting where Jenkins was present and talked about a potential way to solve a Horizon 'bug' by using remote access - on return to his office he emailed his boss Rob Wilson - see a more detailed explanation below*).

IF the Royal Mail (later Post Office) used Jenkins flawed testimony knowing it was - then that was a Royal Mail/Post Office Management cover-up and nothing to do with Tony Blair and Jack Straw and any government from then on, until the shit hit the fan around about the time of the High Court case or the year or two leading up to it.

I can fully understand the people who are now at the Post Office following the split with Royal Mail were by and large the people doing those jobs under Royal Mail and they continued to do what they had done before - which generally is what people do.

It's only when new people come on to the scene that things start to change - and that seemed to be the catalyst of the Second Sight independent review.

The big thing being they got to find from Jenkins himself that there WAS remote access to Horizon and Simon Clarke from Cartwright King wrote his two advice letters to the PO.

That was at 15th July 2013.

It was only THEN that the truth of the matter was SURPRESSED - the COVER-UP began.

Jason Beer has twice now - once to Vennells and now to Perkins - strongly intimated that it was the Post Office EXECUTIVES that have done this and NOT the government, PO Board or the Deep State 'Powers That Be' that have done this and not your beloved conspiracy theory you clearly hold so dear to your heart.

Perkins may have belatedly got involved to 'save' the Royal Mail sell off - her attempt to torpedo the Second Site interim report - the bit about being shocked about Crichton having professional morals - all that doesn't 'smell' right to me.

The inquiry is not over and things may change (the thing about Vennells and the Royal Mail prospectus is still left unresolved for instance) but all this IS NOT about it being Tony Blairs fault -with 'his hands all over it from the very start'.

2010 to 2013 is where the cover-up started because it was only then that anyone with any real 'clout' (Simon Clarke) raised the alarm that something was seriously wrong here, as up to that point most people believed the system was indeed Sub-postmaster access only!



And fwiw Bob - even Nick Wallis has come around to what I've been telling you all along...

Yes, the only thing that really makes sense was if there was a concerted effort to keep information from the (hopelessly incurious) Post Office board by a series of execs over a period of years.

And that might be where the police go looking next.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/perkins-in-wonderland-day-1/




* False evidence by Post Office’s expert contradicted his own report

A senior Fujitsu engineer made a false statement to court about the flawed Post Office IT system, contradicting a report he had written days earlier.

The BBC has obtained Gareth Jenkins' 2010 statement, which helped wrongly jail pregnant postmistress Seema Misra.

It said there were "no cases" where branch accounts could be altered without postmasters' knowledge.

But he had just produced a Post Office report which proposed remotely altering data in branches to fix a bug.

Mr Jenkins, Fujitsu's former chief IT architect, is currently being investigated by the Metropolitan Police for potential perjury, the BBC understands.

At least three Post Office lawyers were told about the internal report which contradicted Mr Jenkins' statement to court, but his report was not disclosed at the trial of Mrs Misra - who had been running a branch at West Byfleet in Surrey.

Mr Jenkins' report and an accompanying memo, external provide the clearest evidence yet that as early as autumn 2010 the Post Office and Fujitsu, which built the Horizon IT system, were aware of details about the software which could cast doubt on prosecutions, and were keeping them hidden.

The memo, which summarised a series of meetings about the report, said that if the bug was widely known, it could cause a "loss of confidence in the Horizon system", provide branches with "ammunition to blame Horizon for future discrepancies" and have "potential impact upon ongoing legal cases".

The Horizon bug, known internally as the "receipts/payments mismatch" issue, was causing discrepancies between the accounts postmasters saw and those on the Post Office main servers. According to the memo, it was known to be affecting 40 branches.

In his report on 29 September 2010, Gareth Jenkins suggested remotely altering data to resolve the bug.

He met other Fujitsu and Post Office representatives a few days later to discuss the possible solutions.

The memo says Mr Jenkins' proposal to remotely access sub-postmasters' accounts had raised "significant data integrity concerns", could lead to questions of "tampering" and could prompt "moral implications" of the Post Office "changing branch data without informing the branch".

In the end, the group chose a different solution - using debt recovery or refunds to make the balances match. The memo acknowledged this could "potentially highlight to branches that Horizon can lose data".

Nine days after delivering his report, Mr Jenkins submitted his final expert witness testimony, which was used by the prosecution in Mrs Misra's trial. In the months leading up to it, he had been drafting his statement for the court, with input from Post Office lawyers.

Mr Jenkins' testimony was also later used in the prosecution of many other sub-postmasters, where details of his report on the bug were again not disclosed.

The BBC has obtained his 2010 testimony, which states there are "no cases where external systems can manipulate the branch's accounts without the users in the branch being aware and authorising the transactions".

On the same day, 8 October, internal documents show that a number of Post Office lawyers had copies of both Mr Jenkins' contradictory claims - his witness statement, and the report about the bug in which he proposed remotely altering branch data.

A member of the Post Office security team had attended the meeting that discussed Mr Jenkins' report and had emailed Rob Wilson, then head of the PO's criminal law team, expressing "concern" about the proposed solutions, external. He wrote that they "may have repercussions in any future prosecution cases and on the integrity of the Horizon Online system".

Attached to his email were the meeting's memo and Mr Jenkins' report.

Mr Wilson then forwarded this email - and the attachments - to Jarnail Singh and Juliet McFarlane, senior lawyers who dealt with Post Office prosecutions.

Mr Singh was specifically assigned to Seema Misra's case and was responsible for disclosure - the duty to share information that might help the opposing side's case.

In a written statement to the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal last year, he said: "I do not recall having seen this document."

But Post Office records reveal that just minutes after receiving the email in 2010, he had printed off Mr Jenkins' report.


During his appearance at the Post Office inquiry in December 2023, Rob Wilson - the former head of the Post Office's criminal law team - was asked why he had not disclosed knowledge of remote access to the courts.

He said he had read the meeting memo about the receipts and payments bug and discussed it with Mr Singh and Ms McFarlane, but did not "understand" that one of the solutions to the bug meant remotely accessing sub-postmasters accounts.

When asked by inquiry counsel Jason Beer why the receipts/payments bug had not been disclosed, when it had been flagged as having an impact on legal cases, he said that he had viewed the issue "as being a completely different system".

He admitted he had "made the wrong decision".

Jarnail Singh is being questioned again by the Post Office inquiry on Friday. His lawyer said it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment "whilst his participation in the inquiry" was ongoing.

A lawyer for Gareth Jenkins said it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment ahead of him giving evidence to the Post Office inquiry in June.

The Post Office said that Ms McFarlane has died.

The solicitors watchdog, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, said it was investigating "a number of solicitors and law firms" who were working on behalf of the Post Office, but would not take disciplinary action until the inquiry had heard all the evidence.

Full article here -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68857142


Jarnail Singh

More Singh’d against than Singh-ing

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

Anyone with a single functioning brain cell ought to know that complex IT systems can go wrong. But the Post Office for years hounded, prosecuted, imprisoned or drove to suicide hundreds on the basis that Horizon was infallible. The evil barstewards that played their part in all this must be held to account.

Meanwhile, true to form and at excessive length, Sluffy continues to play his own idiotic game of diversionary irrelevances. Its hard for me to believe that he was much different when he was a public servant.

Anyway its another day for the self-important, out of her depth ex-civil servant Alice Perkins to face the grilling of Jason Beer KC. 

Who decided that she would make a great chairperson for the Post Office? Perkins was told within days of her appointment, by no less than the most senior auditor on the job, that Horizon was a big problem, yet she ploughed on regardless. What a twerp!

Ten Bobsworth wrote:Meanwhile, true to form and at excessive length, Sluffy continues to play his own idiotic game of diversionary irrelevances. Its hard for me to believe that he was much different when he was a public servant.

What is your problem Bob?

I said it seems from the evidence from the inquiry that it looks to me that there wasn't a massive cover up from various governments from 1999 to date but most likely officers at the Post Office who hid the truth about what was going on from their Board and in doing so the government as well.

Jason Beer has now said twice in public to first Vennells and now Perkins (yesterday) the same thing.

If that isn't enough your  messiah who you seem to throw yourself at the feet of in all this, Nick Wallis, has just come out and said the same thing ffs!

Sluffy wrote:And fwiw Bob - even Nick Wallis has come around to what I've been telling you all along...

Yes, the only thing that really makes sense was if there was a concerted effort to keep information from the (hopelessly incurious) Post Office board by a series of execs over a period of years.

And that might be where the police go looking next.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/perkins-in-wonderland-day-1/

Now if you think I'm a complete waste of space who knows fuck all, then what does it say about the lead Council and sharpest mind at the Inquiry Jason Beer and the country's foremost expert on the Post Office scandal, the investigative journalist and reporter, Nick Wallis - are they now complete waste of space too because they are both independently saying the same thing as me now?


You really are a bitter and twisted old man who believes you are better than everyone - and clearly you are not.

God help you if you behave in real life how you do on here, or rather God help those who have to put up with you...

I'm still not sure about Perkins, even after seeing her give evidence for two days.

She clearly was involved in getting stuff removed from the Royal Mail prospectus - it was in respect to Horizon - so why did she need to do that IF she really had no idea of that the system wasn't 'robust' and an avalanche of miscarriages of justice would sooner or later have to be faced?

Something smells off to me.

It certainly does to Ed Henry KC who all but called her a liar!

(although that was in respect of insurance cover).

It's going to be interesting to hear Shareholder Executives version of all this and what they knew about the Horizon issues and why they wanted mention of Horizon in the prospectus - Royal Mail sell off would leave the Post Office (and thus Horizon) behind and thus any mention of Horizon in the prospectus most relate to 'historical' matters when it did come under Royal Mail.

It was clear put in there for a reason and equally taken out for a reason too.

More fun to come yet I expect!

We've heard from Sluffyland, now here's Nick Wallis's take on the performance of Mrs Straw yesterday:

'Yesterday former Post Office Chair Alice Perkins gave evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. I have given her testimony write up here.
Despite giving us plenty to chew over, there wasn't a strong top line, which is why most journalists had a slightly different favoured quote. Here are a selection:
Ex-Post Office chair says senior executives misled board over Horizon issues - The Guardian
Ex-Post Office chairman told relationship with Fujitsu was ‘too nice' - Daily Telegraph
Post Office chair was aware of Horizon concerns from day one but failed to act - Computer Weekly
Ex-Post Office chair was told of IT risks in 2011 - BBC
I went with Perkins in Wonderland.
The top is too long, but I was just getting my thoughts down in a splurge before reviewing the actual content of the day.
It was hard to mark (ho ho) Perkins, really. She clearly had good intentions going into the job, but appears to have been sideswiped by the realisation she had allowed her independent investigators to uncover a huge miscarriage of justice, and appeared to spend the rest of her tenure trying to cover it back up, rather than letting it out into the open.
Perkins wasn't well-served by her execs, and she was surrounded by mediocrity at boardroom level, but she was no great shakes herself. What we don't know is if she acted with genuine incompetence or was part of a criminal conspiracy to hide the truth.



I unavoidably  missed most of  today's stuff but did manage to pick up on how Mrs Straw found a job at t'Post Office  for Mr Straw's ex-Special Advisor. It was all strictly above board, of course, and  approved by Post Office Minister, Norman Deadsheep, sorry Lamb. 

The other interesting bit I picked up on, was how government lackeys on the Shareholder Executive discussed whether they should get rid of Paula Vennells. Vennells wasn't politically in tune seemed to be one of the complaints.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:We've heard from Sluffyland, now here's Nick Wallis's take on the performance of Mrs Straw yesterday...

Do you realise you behave each day to me just like the Post Office did to the sub-postmasters?

You try to bully me - but that clearly doesn't work.

You constantly talk dismissively of me (eg - Sluffy in Sluffyland...) - incidently that was again brought up today at the inquiry in respect of the scant regard the PO had to its sub-postmasters.

And now you are DELIBERATELY not doing a full disclosure (or at least hoping no one is going to bother looking at the links you provided (and to be fair you are probably right about that) but if they did read your messiah's blog (Nick Wallis) they will see this - which I've already posted TWICE already AND THAT HE NOW SEEMS TO FULLY AGREES WITH WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING...

Sluffy wrote:And fwiw Bob - even Nick Wallis has come around to what I've been telling you all along...

Yes, the only thing that really makes sense was if there was a concerted effort to keep information from the (hopelessly incurious) Post Office board by a series of execs over a period of years.

And that might be where the police go looking next.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/perkins-in-wonderland-day-1/

I find your behaviour quite hypocritical - on the one hand you rightly condemn the Post Office actions - yet you use the same things they did against me - simply because I didn't agree with your ridiculous twenty odd year old government cover up conspiracy theory.

What you are trying to do is silence me and make me go away just like the PO did their damndest to silent the sub-postmasters and make them go away.

Don't you see what you are doing?

Well of course you know what you are doing but don't you see it is exactly what the Post Office did that you found to be repugnant and disgraceful...!!!

Yet you do it yourself...

Bob have you read Nick Wallis article on today's (second day) appearance before the inquiry by Perkins?

No?

Well this is what he says...

So Vennells was universally recognised as a bit of a duffer by everyone around her.

Of course, their instincts were right. Paula Vennells went on to preside over the CORPORATE cover-up of a catastrophic miscarriage of justice which...

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/the-taxi-for-paula-vennells-which-never-quite-came/

He specifically said CORPORATE and NOT GOVERNMENT...

...(and Vennells not Perkins, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Teresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or even little Rishi).



Has Wallis now become a TWERP too along with Jason Beer KC and myself because we all don't see any evidence of a Deep State, twenty odd year old, multi-government cover-up, conspiracy theory like you believe there to have been?

I think it was Mark Twain that wrote, 'Never argue with fools. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience'.
It seems like quite good advice really.



As for Mrs Straw, it would be a hard heart that had no some sympathy for poor old Jack even if he had no-one else to blame but himself.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:I think it was Mark Twain that wrote, 'Never argue with fools. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience'.
It seems like quite good advice really.



As for Mrs Straw, it would be a hard heart that had no some sympathy for poor old Jack even if he had no-one else to blame but himself.

Well I'll see your Mark Twain with the good books...

There are none so blind that will not see, or deaf as those that will not listen.

I'll see you both with a Mark Twain bobblehead.

Be careful Bonce, or Bob will think you are just another Twerp!


God forbid.

Lady B deserves a medal. She endured, without complaint, the self-important twerp that is Alice Perkins throughout her haughty, arrogant evidence-giving over two days.

I always thought Jack Straw was a bit like that himself but Mrs Straw would plainly have been more than capable of giving him a run for his money in the 'do you know who I am' stakes. Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!

There's two days of Andrew Parsons next week. That seems like it might be a bit of a marathon. The following week (18 June to be precise) a couple of heroes of the piece are due to appear in the form of Second Sight's Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson. I'm quite looking forward to that.

Sluffy wrote:Be careful Bonce, or Bob will think you are just another Twerp!


God forbid.

I'm a proud twerp.

I'm following the Post Office case, but I'm not really knowledgable enough to comment upon the details. I suppose you'd expect nothing less from a man with a Noddy car on his desk.

Between you, Sluffy, and Bob, I'm trying to get a handle on it, but it's a messy business.
Better take a break.