Post Office Scandal

It’s next to Thuthecs isn’t it.

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If he does not already understand after all that has transpired, he is incapable of understanding, or simply unwilling.

I think one thing that binds together this seemingly never-ending shower of Post Office detritus-for-employees is that they are not accustomed to being challenged, having always been in the position of being part of the corporate shoeing, not the shoed.

I can only imagine that "challenging the narrative " was not conducive to continuing to have an income.

Vennells for all her faults is not the first and only CEO: her predecessors should also be called to the inquiry.

If nothing else, this Inquiry has revealed the Post Office’s culture and the way they dealt with the SPM’S. Accordingly, cut out the nonsense, pardon them all, and compensate them all appropriately.imho.:rage:

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Love it…!!! :crazy_face:

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GT has continually kept the blinkers on throughout this mornings questioning, completely dismissing the faults in the Horizon system. Yes, millions of transactions went through fine, but he continues to ignore the life changing significance to the people of the transactions that badly went wrong. It is clear, that those who suffered through the faults are and always have been at the bottom of his agenda, if even ever on it.

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They have been, David Mills (Managing Director 2001-2005) was there 16th April, Alan Cook (2006-2010) was there 12th April (remember his “subbies with their hands in the till” comment), David Smith (2010-2012) was there 11th April.

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Apols perhaps, as my expectations for this morning’s events had been suitably managed, and things have turned out even worse (IMHO). Even allowing for this, it’s clear the NFSP was set-up to handle micro-issues, not macro ones like Horizon.

What about Crozier?

Sorry, I was thinking of the Post Office CEOs and pre-separation MDs, Crozier was of course the overall RMG CEO and he gave evidence on 12th April.

Transcripts of evidence are available here, usually the next working day.

https://postofficeinquiry.dracos.co.uk/phases-5-6/

Thanks. No sympathy for Vennells, but I think the rot had set in from top to bottom well before her initial appointment at the Post Office

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@Eoink @HappyListener – I have a good deal of inside knowledge about the NFSP’s power etc which I don’t have time to share right now but will do in due course.

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What an obnoxious, shouty man.

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He is also quite stupid. He can’t substantiate claims he made at meetings and doesn’t understand that loudly repeating the reason he made the claims in more detail isn’t evidence. He can’t produce any facts to support his positions.
He referred to Freeths as “ambulance chasers”.

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Yesterday Kay Linnell restored my faith in humanity - after today just horrible.

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I always thought it was Unions job to support their members, and to treat everything from the company as suspicious, and not to be swayed by peoples Status. Clearly that’s not the case here. I would expect members to leave after hearing this.

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I think that is the first time I’ve seen a slight crack in Sir Wyn’s demeanour as he thanked Thomson after his rant.

Amazingly Wiki tells me they still had 6,727 members as of Jan ‘23. However as membership is free maybe people stick with it because it may be of use some time.

Hm, pay peanuts, get Monkeys

When asked why he didn’t support the PM’s with the small % of errors that was still causing severe livelihood issued, his response was about being too busy trying to get new work. Again he says he was too trusting of POL - surely it’s the point of Unions not to be trusting

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Apologies, didn’t mean to offend any Monkeys

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I think I get his position.
The Post Office branches are in a vulnerable position as business moves away from them.
As a trade body the NFSP needs to work to ensure the long term viability of the network.
Which means being a mirror twin of POL as if it fails their members lose their franchises, so POL must be defended at all costs.
Third parties (banks, Royal Mail, Government departments) will be put off using the Post Offices if the computing environment isn’t seen as reliable.
Then the mental leap to therefore criticism of Horizon risks the future of the Post Office network, and the need to robustly defend it.
This leads to a mindset where Horizon can do no wrong. Therefore SPMs were all guilty. And another mental leap to the fact that there have always been thefts from Post Offices meaning that all the SPMs prosecuted under Horizon are guilty.

Sadly he doesn’t seem to recognise that a system which processes billions of transactions can be largely very reliable whilst still having intermittent issues which cause hundreds of problems a year.
Basically he’s completely committed to the Post Office, sees the challenges to Horizon’s robustness as existential threats, it’s not that he thinks a few hundred wrongly convicted SPMs are acceptable collateral damage, more that in his head Horizon must be right and therefore people saying it has faults are wrong.
He’s also not very bright as far as I could see, his answers weren’t obfuscating unlike many previous witnesses, he just failed to understand the questions. And he is loud, aggressive and incapable of hearing an alternative opinion.

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Loved that - I’ll give you five minutes - to finally hang yourself.

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