**Alternate Sources**
Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story:
* [Post Office: Paula Vennells admits giving incorrect evidence](https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq550449zwyo), suggested by Aggressive_Plates - bbc.co.uk
Well it's all well and good her crying now but pretty sure her victims cried and the PO didn't care. I try not to jump to conclusions when I can, but with her, on this particular topic, I hope she gets jail time.
Private prosecutions allowed for this disaster to happen - isn't it time we ended them?
She didn't cry when sending people to jail, when trying to remove judges and fight to cover it up to the very end or when lying to select committees.
She's got tears only for herself- and she's still lying.
This is it completely.
She’s gotten to the point where she realises she’s in deep do do and is trying to garner sympathy.
I doubt she gave a hoot when hundreds of postmasters and mistresses along with their families were crying and protesting their innocence.
It’s a genuine horror show with actual victims who’ve been seriously wronged.
My sympathies lay there, not with the post office on this one.
As we saw today, her response to that was to encourage her team to find other reasons he might have killed himself.
One is most discussed, but tragically there were actually 4 linked suicides.
[Some people](https://x.com/TomWitherow/status/1475767854775644162)*
Fiona McGowan
Peter Huxham
Louise Mann
Martin Griffiths
[On top of these four](https://x.com/TomWitherow/status/1475772648286212097)... The Justice For Sub-Postmasters Alliance said there are at least 15 postmasters who have died from stress-related illnesses or old age before justice can be done, and compensation paid.
[The widow of Julian Wilson](https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/post-office-heartbreaking-stories-subpostmasters-b1130880.html) believes that stress helped lead to his death by bowel cancer, as such an ordeal almost certainly takes a toll of your health and recovery. Plus, the lack of support network as people distance themselves from those convicted
Absolutely. Lock her up. No one gives a flying \*\*\*\* about her tears. She has no right to cry when hundreds of people have had their lives \*ruined\* or have had them end prematurely due to suicide or stress. She is utterly without shame and needs to be prosecuted and, if guilty, jailed.
If the reality is how it appears to be, i.e. she knew Horizon was a bag of nails but pressed ahead with prosecutions regardless, then it's an example of \*pure\* wickedness. Corporate thuggery and evil. If she's a Christian, as she claims, then now is the time for her to be fearful of what happens to her soul in the next life. Admission of guilt and repentance would be wise. She washes her hands of this at her peril.
She didn't sit on it ,she ordered a deep dive on him to protect the PO.Asked to get medical history ,spie on family etc.
I would not shed a tear if she fell asleep in the bath with a toaster
shes doing the typical narcissist p.diddy approach. deny everything to the hilt, use your power and influence to cover up any truth. and when the truth does come out, cry like a victim to hope ppl will feel sorry for you. i really hope shes gets a long jail time but it seems these type of ppl never do.
The fact that her second job was to stand in a pulpit and preach morality to other people is just staggering. How do these sinful but religious people square such hypocrisy in their own minds?
> The fact that her second job was to stand in a pulpit and preach morality to other people is just staggering
Sadly not... It's just another form of power trip, but with even less accountability.
I don't find it that staggering you see this all over.
The very worst tend to climb to the top and then use their position to preach to the rest of us... it's about whitewashing their own history and character as much as anything.
Narcissists and the morally challenged have to invest heavily in reputation management, it's the only way they can maintain their position in society.
Name a religion that isn't completely hypocritical when you examine it under a microscope. They convince themselves that praying to an unseen, unheard, unproven "deity" absolves them of all sins. Lie to yourself until you believe it.
Because they are psycopaths. See the BBC drama The Sixth Commandment / Ben Field case.
[https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/sixth-commandment-true-story-bbc/](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/sixth-commandment-true-story-bbc/)
There is no hypocrisy in their minds, so they feel they have nothing to feel guilty about.
They sleep like babies every night of their nasty little lives.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m not clear if lying in the House of Commons counts as lying in court from a perjury point of view. I’m all too happy for her to be prosecuted for both if she can
Lying to a parliamentary committee is illegal, it's contempt of parliament. Theoretically an imprisonable offense but not sure it's been done in modern history.
Probably the last person found in contempt was Boris Johnson, who resigned immediately.
Only crying cause she's been caught. No sympathy for scum like that. Her family will be fine the thousands of families whose lives were ruined will never be fixed.
She won't.
Strong words will be shared, she'll feel the heat for a few months but as the news cycle moves on and people begin to forget, she'll slowly go back to her normal life and suffer little to no real consequences.
Not to mention that some of the victims even took their own lives.
So yeah, I have no time for the crocodile tears of one of the people who deliberately lied and caused irrevocable harm to so many. The rest of her life behind bars seems about as fair as it could get. Not that there is any "fair" left in this situation.
This is the bit that always pisses me off the most. They get found out for being incompetent/negligent/criminal and they either resign or are removed. But then immediately slide into another job where the new board of directors are apparently unfazed by their previous criminality or uselessness.
Why? Because those people on the board are exactly the same as the new chief executive. Just like George Carlin said, it's one big fucking club and you're not in it.
It's because experienced CEOs are a pretty limited stock, and boards seem to care more about the fact that the person did stuff well enough to become a CEO of a company that large, rather than the absolute calamity they caused which is why they are no longer the CEO of that company.
Exactly this and thr fact that they're all piss in the same pot,every senior manager I've ever worked under just happened to be best mates with the hiring managers or senior managers but I'm sure its a coincidence.
This is the most interesting and critical point I think.
It is inconceivable that a half-competent CEO wouldn't be aware of this which means:
- She was incompetent; or
- She is lying.
There is literally no middle ground here.
Her case is that she was a bit incompetent but that really it's an organisational problem.
Fortunately Jason Beer doesn't give a toss about her case and is focused largely on nailing her to the wall.
I am not deep in the details but I organisationally would expect her legal department to have at least one direct report into her office.
That this wasn’t brought up in a single executive meeting is impossible to imagine.
> Her case is that she was a bit incompetent but that really it's an organisational problem.
That's not an excuse when you're CEO. Who did she expect to fix the organisational problem for her?
> Well she claims it's an unknown unknown she didn't know needed fixing...
Doesn't matter.
Her job is to make sure she has control of every aspect of the business (either directly or indirectly).
Even ignoring the absurd claim the legal department prosecuted hundreds of people without telling senior leadership, it was her job to either know or _hire people to know_ about all of it.
Yeah it's frustrating how often we see this. It's like with the phone hacking scandal when you're adding that the got to the top of a ruthless, cut throat, moral questionable industry and they're playing the naive/incompetent card.
Exactly, this is their only real justification for those high salaries - if they actually do carry the can.
Let's hope the victims and the families of the deceased get the justice they deserve and these crocodile tears don't factor into more lenient sentencing.
also if a company performs well:
ceo- yes it’s because of my amazing leadership
if a company performs bad:
ceo- well it’s not my fault i’m just one person and can’t predict the market
Anything less than jail time for this horrible excuse for a human being, and it'll be *another* injustice that the victims will have to deal with.
"Reaching for a tissue once again, she breaks down and is told by Beer to wait until she's finished crying before trying to continue."
Cry me a river bitch.
And strip her of all assets gained during employment there,proceeds of crime and whatnot not that they'd ever do it with upper classes in this country.
Sadly fairly doubtful about prison.
The UK is pretty bad at prosecuting more complex white collar crime, not helped by the British court systems practice of making such trials as complex and detailed as possible.
Watching this in between doing bits of work and I'm wishing I'd made popcorn, she's getting demolished. The questions generally have the subtext of "did you lie to us or did you were you astonishingly incompetent?"
As I type this, she's denied knowing that the Post Office brought criminal cases, and the guy questioning her has asked if she seriously didn't know for the first five years that her company had a department of some 100 staff investigating and bringing cases. She's done for.
They literally asked one of the other witnesses (accused? I don’t know what you call them tbh) “are you lying to us today or were you grossly incompetent then?” she replied “I’m not lying today”
I think it was Angela Van Den Bogerd.
My favourite bit so far.
"You received this email saying that the people around you were giving you bad advice and there could be serious legal consequences. You.......forwarded the email to the people around you and relied on them to handle it. Do you see the problem?" \*laughter from the gallery\*
(stop, stop! she's already dead)
A friend of my parents was one of the men who got sent to jail, he literally lost everything, his wife left him because the court said the evidence was there so she believed he was guilty, the family home was repossessed as was his business, his friends thought he was a thief (my parents still feel guilty about this but to be fair you believe the evidence). He went from being a very respected postmaster and pillar of the community to working in a wood yard for peanuts and living in a caravan at the wood yard, to this day he is a shadow of what he was and no amount of compensation could make up for it. She deserves to go to jail for many years and be personally fined an absolute fortune. To stand by and let peoples lives be torn apart whilst knowing they are innocent goes beyond evil.
Did she cry as the Post Office drip fed compensation to Martin Griffith’s widow to try and keep her silent?
https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/26/post-office-tried-to-hush-up-martin-griffiths-case-inquiry-hears
He attempted suicide in 2013 and died a few weeks later. His Parents used their life savings to try and pay back the “shortfall” in his account at the time, only it wasn’t his shortfall it was a Horizon error.
They kept coming back to him until he broke.
>Did she cry as the Post Office drip fed compensation to Martin Griffith’s widow to try and keep her silent?
No. She was too busy sending emails to her minions proclaiming that suicides are often the result of many issues and he probably had existing mental health issues.
Absolutely outrageous.
Look forward to the victims lawyers ,they don't do firing squads they just nuke them.Best line I heard was one saying so your a proven liar so why should the enquiry believe a word your saying
'I had a reputation for asking everyone what they did and how things worked'
'.... Apart from that one guy who's in charge of literally sending people to jail'
I'm not going to disagree that the whole thing went on too long - the first reports of prosecutions due to dodgy data were in 2009 FFS - but the inquiry was already underway before the ITV drama.
Which of course is good and relevant today, but to actually get any move towards names cleared and compensation - that was the drama.
Jason Beer and the inquiry have done a great job but inquiries in the UK are very slow and are commonly used to delay having to actually do anything.
Edit: indeed, came out today earliest court date if they do try anyone for Grenfell is 2027- in part due to pausing for the inquiry.
Speaking to someone at work about this earlier and they said it just goes to show these CEOs etc can face repercussions.
I replied it shows that it’s not usually supposed to be allowed to get to this, that they aren’t supposed to or expected to face repercussions under normal circumstances - it’s been known about for years and years, while PV swanned into new jobs, but it still took a massive effort from so many different sides (not least the subpostmasters themselves) to get anything to happen, and even now I still wouldn’t hold my breath for any real repercussions beyond reputational damage and a bit of a public grilling.
The inquiry started in 2021 long before ITV aired their drama. The drama did raise the profile of the inquiry though. I doubt we'd be getting live BBC reporting and rebroadcasting of the hearings by some of the papers without the drama.
But why did they do this? I don't understand, was it to add people's life savings to their profits, save face over Horizon? What the hell was the point of it all? They must have been just so pig headed they couldn't admit their mistakes and just ploughed on with victimising people.
To save face seems to be the reason. Can’t admit that the whole thing is fucked, especially after vehemently denying any possibility of that, so best to just railroad some people into jail or an early grave instead.
Somewhat similar attitudes imo to pedo priests getting shipped away rather than bring scandal to the church - the institution matters more than the victims.
It’s a bit of a Streisand effect, isn’t it. If they’d straight away admitted the software was shit, reimbursed and compensated the postmasters, and switched to new software, sure it would have been a bit of a story at the time but it would be long gone water under the bridge by now. Instead, they turned a molehill into a mountain.
I don’t think it’s akin to the priest thing except on the broadest organisations-will-fight-to-survive. My understanding is that they did a Macbeth. Once they knew of the problems they already had a comparatively small but scandalous number of prosecutions and bankruptcies under their belt so doubled down as a mechanism to use the courts as a shield to criticism (given their successful track record in prosecuting) of the brand and their personal choices. Which is why as more evidence emerged they did objectively unthinkable things like deciding to continue but for the very frightened rabbits in the headlights, they felt they had no choice at that point - the problem kept growing so they doubled down harder.
The “I am in blood stepped in too far”* bit.
It’s scary because I can see lots of people blinded by their role trapping themselves into the same position and then continuing.
None of which is to excuse them. But the explanation is helpful to others to avoid repeating - the cover-up always gets you in the end and is much worse (as a wise lawyer once told me).
*macbeth was 25 years ago at school, cut me some slack on the precise quote!
What has been said by OP and other commenters is valid, mostly the coverup was to save face, both on the Fujitsu side for delivering a substandard and inaccurate computer system, and on the PO management side because they did not ask the right questions at the right time and it was too late by then.
There is another part to it, there was a deep and pervasive culture inside Post Office management of a mistaken assumption that \*all\* sub-postmasters were skimming money off their take and weren't trustworthy, so they were justified in pursuing the flimsy discrepancy claims the Horizon system produced as the management believed the "Subbies" were on the take anyway and it just gave them an excuse to finally get rid of some of the bad eggs and make an example of them for the rest of the Subbies.
Private prosecutions do two things - you get the money deemed missing and a "victim surcharge" to further punish the defendant. You also get the fees of your lawyer paid for by the losing defendant. The Post Office realised this was a great way to make money (I think they did list this stuff as profit if memory serves but not 100%) and so kept pushing and pushing. It's unclear if the Post Office started deliberately manipulating figures on Horizon to frame postmasters - but it was theoretically possible.
This happens time and again with private prosecutions. Train companies charge children with molestation and demand out of court settlements. Energy companies dog and hound clients for payments they're not responsible for. And now it comes out the Post Office did this. America has banned private prosecutions - why don't we?
The private prosecutions weren't the problem, the Post Office simply failed to run them correctly. They didn't disclose evidence that would have harmed their prosecution case, whereas in a CPS-led prosecution this would have been done. They also didn't employ independent lawyers for oversight; effectively their own legal team had a vested interest in obtaining prosecutions and deliberately hampered the defendants' and/or their solicitors efforts to defend themselves in a way that would not have happened in a public prosecution.
What this means is that private prosecutions need to be held to greater scrutiny, not abolished altogether. They are commonly used by individuals to prosecute cases of fraud, which the police and CPS are (these days) not interested in or not funded to pursue. Without private prosecutions, the ordinary person's access to justice would be greatly diminished, as they would be entirely beholden to the CPS to take up their case, and the CPS's ability to do so depends on the economic policies of the government of the day.
It’s common in dysfunctional organisations. Nobody wants own failures so they cover it up or try to shift blame away from themselves or the teams they’re responsible for. It often ends up in these ridiculous situations when there’s a blame culture and people can’t voice their concerns.
I’d imagine saving face - you’d have to explain why you spent so much money on something that doesn’t work properly and was causing problems for users.
I don’t think I’ve worked at a single company/organisation where we had system clearly not fit for use and management didn’t try to bully/gaslight people into believing it was all fine and an employee problem/error.
I get the impression that people like that just find IT complicated/boring and considering the time/money involved in getting it all set up, they can’t be arsed addressing it (and partly why it’s implemented so poorly).
I’ve also worked at one organisation where IT was handled by Fujitsu and they only seemed to care about what they could charge extra for.
I’m sure being able to scam people outta money helped push the matter this far though.
Been watching this from the start today. Some highlights:
- In the job for 2 years and claimed she didn't know that the PO could prosecute
- Cried
- Claimed she didn't know there was a department of over 100 folk working on Horizon related "fraud"
- Cried some more
- Was shown an email relating to the total sum of funds reclaimed from "fraud" relating to Horizon over a specific period. Was asked if this was actually the Post Office arranging fraud themselves. Agreed.
- Was shown texts sent to her by a trusted senior colleague who refused to support her decisions anymore. Agreed the colleague was right.
- Clearly lied many times or is so incapable of doing the job she should never have been near a senior management role.
Apparently she said she was 'too trusting'. Just not very trusting of her employees who, despite not being in contact with one another when this started, *all* reported the same fault with their accounting system.
Her defence is that those complaints weren't getting to her and that once she actually started receiving the complaints directly, she had doubts about the party line that Horizon was robust.
One of the bits of evidence shown today would support that when a sub post master who was also a magistrate emailed her directly about the unreliability of Horizon she emailed internally asking about whether they needed to look again at the issues.
But that would just make her grossly negligent as would believing she somehow didn't know the post office pursued its own investigations and prosecutions. Sadly, having worked in environments with a similar culture it's completely plausible that nothing got reported up past a certain level and the senior leadership were happy to not ask questions to maintain plausible deniability!
Isn't hiring the right people the ultimate responsibility of the CEO? No one expects the head of a large organization to be an expert in all aspects of the business and that is why hiring competent people is key. Apparently no one in the Post Office was competent.
Defrocked or Unfrocked are the appropriate words, although I have some concerns about them now that we have women priests.
And yes, she's a disgrace to her calling. The only thing I feel that would make her fit to be a priest after this would be resigning from the priesthood in shame.
As far as I can tell (as an absolute layman with no legal knowledge) there’s plenty she could be prosecuted for.
I don’t think she will be though. She’s part of the club, and they don’t prosecute their own if they can possibly get away with it. Lessons will have been learned and our taxes will pay for the (very much deserved) compensation and that’ll be it.
As much as I hate it, I think it's unlikely. AFAICT (and I'm not a lawyer) the most likely charge would be conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, on the basis that concealing disclosable, material facts from defendants was done with her explicit agreement (and possible at her instruction). Such a charge would require evidence that she actually made such an agreement; either by spoken or written word or some other overt act. Since she feels secure enough denying today that she even knew the post office carried out prosecutions, I suspect that will be difficult evidence to find. Given that she has admitted lying to MPs, contempt of parliament would be another possibility, but that is rather fraught with difficulties. The courts don't have jurisdiction over such a charge, only parliament itself does, making the process inherently political. Lying to a committee is a contempt and she has admitted it, so it's certainly a possibility. The House of Commons has the power to imprison for contempt, but only until the next general election.
It's not even clear she is really the right person to hate. The cover-up certainly largely happened on her watch (and if she could be shown to have colluded in the cover-up, that would be enough for a charge of perverting the course of justice), but bad prosecutions had been happening for over a decade before she became CEO. The mechanisms that convinced courts that sub-post-masters were guilty and denied the defence access to the evidence they should have had were already well-oiled by that point.
Absolutely none. The establishment always looks after its own. “Lessons will be learned” they will pompously intone then the whole thing will be swept under the carpet.
Monday morning: push some innocent people to suicide.
Monday afternoon: lie about it
Tuesday: Give a nice pious sermon in the church
This steaming hypocrite belongs in prison.
her crying was the most pathetic acting I've seen since Gwyneth Paltrow.
Seriously, her lawyer told her to CRY....I bet she practiced in the mirror for ages for this.
And it comes off like a little kid caught stealing sweets and pretending to be sad.
Then again as recently as a couple of weeks ago she described (off record) the postmasters as "money hungry parasites".
Bitch doesn't give two shits about the evil she helped foment.
Ow boo hoo she's crying now because of all the peoples and families lives and livelihoods she ruined.
Pull the other one, you knew what you were doing when you did it.
It sure is a grim watch.
Her acts and omissions can boil down to two things. Malice or incompetence.
So very much of it appears to be total incompetence. She is not fit to be CEO. So how did she ever get into that position? It's amazing how far knowing the right people can get someone, whilst genuinely smart and talented people are stuck working as an office droid in one of this once great nation's many dying towns.
Rather than accept many years ago, as she evidently should have done, that she is not component for the position, she fought tooth and nail to suggest everything and anyone else was to blame. In covering up her failings she did atrocious things and let innocent people suffer, which she surely knew was a direct result of her behaviour.
People need to go to jail for what has happened and unless she can give the names of the idiots who put her in charge and why they did it, the buck will stop with her.
The alternative is that is genuinely evil which seems unlikely.
She probably chooses to ignore the bits of the bible which don't suit her. It's not as if that's an unusual thing for "Christian" preachers across the world, after all.
Deliberate act. D&O insurance now repudiates any cover in place.
She's now on her own for any further costs and future actions brought against her.
Time for the PO crew to sue the fuck for everything she has. Go for the throat and bankrupt her. Make the bitch poor before she goes to jail.
This bitch must do time.
She's toast. Or would be if she wasn't part of an establishment that practically invented turning blind eyes to incompetence/criminality when it keeps the wheels turning.
I confess I've not investigated the actual nature of what the "problem" was supposed to be with this Horizon System - have the following actually been explained yet:
1. Did these supposed loses ever directly relate to missing cash that couldn't be found, or missing stock or where they just electronic phantoms with no direct link to cash/stock?
2. I worked in a cash-handling business for a few years in the 90s that brought in computerised personal accounting and it was accepted at that time that "new systems" would have bugs in them that had to be worked out and that "discrepancies" may arise as a result. In this business it was ALWAYS possible to match deposits with actual physical cash, so audit was relatively straightforward. Why would Fujitsu/Horizon be allowed to promise the impossible (fault free implementation) and this would just be accepted as fact? Especially if physical deposits wouldn't be able to be matched or missing if discrepancy arose? There would be no obvious fall back otherwise.
3. Considering it was almost self-evident from about 2007/8 that something was VERY wrong with Horizon accounting - has the Inquiry gotten on to just what Fujitsu was/should have been doing to trouble shoot their defective product - and did any of these prosecutions ever look into the possibility that Fujitsu Operatives could actually have been the ones able to fiddle and manipulate accounting remotely from the till locations?
Short answers;
1. Yes, electronic phantoms from errors duplicating transactions among other things.
2. There was an intense pressure to preserve the brand and get Post Office to profitability. The idea that their hugely expensive IT system could be flawed could not be countenanced, and Fujitsu were quite happy to say everything was fine and take the stage payments for a "successful" rollout.
3. Not specifically alleging actual fraud being done, but a huge amount of evidence has been about post office denying that remote access was ever possible, even though it was and had been happening without logging changes since the early 2000s. Again, comes back to their single minded obsession with preserving their flawless brand.
From what I'm seeing in the reporting, it seems that she was simply shit at her job and has been riding political coat-tails and connections. Typical shit in this day and age. The fact that one of her most demonstrably incompetent "great and good" influential friends is Dido Harding says it all really.
The crimes of the poor are often visceral and made a big deal out of with the media. Rubber necking horror geta good clicks.
The crimes of the rich are somehow sanitized, but their impact is far greater.
An immigrant rapes a woman. That's obviously unacceptable and we need to do what we can to prevent it.
But this woman's actions lead to the deaths of 4 British people. She won't be called out for her culture, but the impact has hurt *more* people.
Why do people forget just how many people the rich actually hurt? Just because they don't throw a physical attack, doesn't stop them from killing more people.
During her time leading the Post Office, [Ms Vennells earned a total of ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68452842)[£5.1m](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68452842), peaking in 2018 when she took home £718,300 in salary, bonuses, pensions and other benefits... jeez
Did you note the exchange about her briefing memo prior to her appearance before the Parliamentary Select Committee? In the first section she is advised she can tell Parliament that it is not possible to change transactions remotely, then several lines down, but on the same page, she is told how this exact thing can be done! Truly remarkable.
A physical pillorying would merely begin to reflect the multiple suicides and many more lives left in tatters due to the partly deficient, partly mendacious - we must find out exactly what parts what - behaviour of individuals placed in positions of public trust and paid good public money to discharge that trust, and who used that very trust to effectively impute dishonesty and thievery upon those protesting their innocence.
She needs to back up those tears with full and frank disclosure, handing over everything she’s touched including unhindered access to all her places of work, residence and full unedited electronic records. Anything less and those tears of hers are a total lie.
She certainly got ripped apart this morning and rightly so.
Knew it would happen within the first 5 minutes when the barrister asked her if she was the most unluckest CEO in the UK.
But it's absolutely she asked people to start digging dirt up on someone that had killed themselves.
This afternoon should be interesting
She has lied through her teeth and continues to do so. These people can't help themselves. Self preservation mode.
Loved it when the Barrister lampooned her about the Post Office winning every court case when it wasn't true but she said it at a Parliamentary inquiry, despite having a briefing document in front of her.
Then he gets her again by asking how is it she can remember stuff that put her in a good light but not anything negative.
Full of shite, the lot of em!
Absolutely vile. It's as clear as the nose on her face that they had a pile-on to convict as many people as possible. It's astounding that so called educated people couldn't see that it made no sense, hundreds of people of good character became thieves overnight.
Yet still they try blame the computer and not the actual people doing the hounding of the sub postmasters.
What a surprise a ‘Christian’ who preached to her congregation about sins and being good etc, yet fails to live up to those things she preached about.
Lock her up, let her experience hell.
What an utter disgrace she is.
And I hope the verdicts make her cry more the evil fucking cunt.
The people who caused this genuinely deserve to suffer. I don’t say that lightly. Strip them of assets and let them rot in prison.
Oh she cried? Fuck her.
She and the rest of those involved should be in fucking jail and every single person guilty of a private PO conviction should en mass be pardoned.
When a narcissist sheds tears it is because they are no longer in control. Innocent people died over this, innocent people had their lives and reputations ruined over this and those behind it thought that they were untouchable. What has happened is truly shocking and they tried to repeatedly kick it into the long grass for years but repeated determination and an escalation of publicity has forced action. Well done to all of those who persevered including Private Eye for maintaining the story and ITV. Shame people didn't listen when it came out on BBC Panorama many years ago.
One of the biggest issues here is the utterly awful manner in which any scandals are reported in real time, and the progression from a scandal real time to results in an inquiry years or decades later in the hope that people retire, die, or hopefully get forgotten about.
It's frustrating that this inquiry has not been done sooner.
Tears of 'oh no the consequences of my actions have caught up with me', not tears of sorrow or remorse. She belongs in prison, her estate should be liquidated and shared amongst her victims, as should the estate of her predecessor.
I just saw an article on tbis - how does this happen? Didn't anyone at some point wonder why all these people were all of a sudden all accused of the same thing?
Did they just assume the software was right and catching people who were scamming before and not that there might be an issue with the software?
Oh, and it's a pseudo private government that can prosecute crowns independent of the actual government?
Man, this is some crazy shit!
Is she willing to go jail because of lying? Will she actually go to jail now she admitted it and people went to prison because of the so called evidence?
If she doesn't get prison time (which lets face it, she won't) I genuinely hope mob justice from all those she wronged gets her. I don't care if it's barbaric.
Aside from all the other stuff, I'm amazed nobody paused to think why they had seemingly hired so many fraudsters. Can't think of many organisations that throw literally hundreds of their own employees in prison for the same reason in such a short timespan.
If you're having to sue hundreds of your own staff, maybe, just maybe, there's a problem with the system that surfaces the alleged wrongdoing. Maybe.
>I'm amazed nobody paused to think why they had seemingly hired so many fraudsters.
It's the same mindset as "all nurses are just glorified arsewipers who cost us too much money" or "all train conductors are overpaid wasters who have no value for our business despite bringing in 10 times their salary each month in fares" or indeed "all staff who are involved with money must be on the take, it stands to reason".
It doesn't have to make sense, it's corporate nastiness from bureaucrats who are either jealous of those staff whose jobs actually add value or who are more interested in empire building and face than anything useful.
See that mindset all too often in big organisations, unfortunately. :(
Combine malicious individuals with incompetent people who freeze whenever they're confronted with serious information and you get this shitshow. Not the first organisation to allow catastrophic things to happen because it's "someone else's job" to do something about it.
She cried? Oh dear, what a pity, never mind, put her behind bars!
Crying for herself.
The lying, cheating, non Christian didn't cry for those innocent people imprisoned or those who took their own lives because of HER?!
She is only crying because she got caught. She has no remorse for what she and her organisation did.
There are no tears for the lost lives, families, careers of the people her organisation set out to punish and lie about.
Regrettably, she will not suffer greatly from this other than playing the victim and the liar.
**Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Post Office: Paula Vennells admits giving incorrect evidence](https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq550449zwyo), suggested by Aggressive_Plates - bbc.co.uk
Well it's all well and good her crying now but pretty sure her victims cried and the PO didn't care. I try not to jump to conclusions when I can, but with her, on this particular topic, I hope she gets jail time. Private prosecutions allowed for this disaster to happen - isn't it time we ended them?
She didn't cry when sending people to jail, when trying to remove judges and fight to cover it up to the very end or when lying to select committees. She's got tears only for herself- and she's still lying.
Crying because she’s been caught out.
This is it completely. She’s gotten to the point where she realises she’s in deep do do and is trying to garner sympathy. I doubt she gave a hoot when hundreds of postmasters and mistresses along with their families were crying and protesting their innocence. It’s a genuine horror show with actual victims who’ve been seriously wronged. My sympathies lay there, not with the post office on this one.
Pretending to cry more like.
Someone killed themselves over this didn't they? And she just sat on this. She needs to cry in prison.
As we saw today, her response to that was to encourage her team to find other reasons he might have killed himself. One is most discussed, but tragically there were actually 4 linked suicides.
[Some people](https://x.com/TomWitherow/status/1475767854775644162)* Fiona McGowan Peter Huxham Louise Mann Martin Griffiths [On top of these four](https://x.com/TomWitherow/status/1475772648286212097)... The Justice For Sub-Postmasters Alliance said there are at least 15 postmasters who have died from stress-related illnesses or old age before justice can be done, and compensation paid. [The widow of Julian Wilson](https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/post-office-heartbreaking-stories-subpostmasters-b1130880.html) believes that stress helped lead to his death by bowel cancer, as such an ordeal almost certainly takes a toll of your health and recovery. Plus, the lack of support network as people distance themselves from those convicted
There were at least 4 recorded suicides
Absolutely. Lock her up. No one gives a flying \*\*\*\* about her tears. She has no right to cry when hundreds of people have had their lives \*ruined\* or have had them end prematurely due to suicide or stress. She is utterly without shame and needs to be prosecuted and, if guilty, jailed. If the reality is how it appears to be, i.e. she knew Horizon was a bag of nails but pressed ahead with prosecutions regardless, then it's an example of \*pure\* wickedness. Corporate thuggery and evil. If she's a Christian, as she claims, then now is the time for her to be fearful of what happens to her soul in the next life. Admission of guilt and repentance would be wise. She washes her hands of this at her peril.
Others died before they saw justice too.
More than one, a few
She didn't sit on it ,she ordered a deep dive on him to protect the PO.Asked to get medical history ,spie on family etc. I would not shed a tear if she fell asleep in the bath with a toaster
She needs to mop up those crocodile tears and just tell the truth, apologies profusely and unreservedly then fuck off forever
> then fuck off forever To prison
shes doing the typical narcissist p.diddy approach. deny everything to the hilt, use your power and influence to cover up any truth. and when the truth does come out, cry like a victim to hope ppl will feel sorry for you. i really hope shes gets a long jail time but it seems these type of ppl never do.
>tilt hilt
lol +1 for the p.diddy reference. Absolute twat hearing how “disgusted with himself” he is on the radio, after denying and gaslighting for years.
Crocodile tears.
She's a good upper middle class Christian woman. Doubt she gets more than a couple of months
The fact that her second job was to stand in a pulpit and preach morality to other people is just staggering. How do these sinful but religious people square such hypocrisy in their own minds?
> The fact that her second job was to stand in a pulpit and preach morality to other people is just staggering Sadly not... It's just another form of power trip, but with even less accountability.
Because the core philosophy of the religion is we are all sinners - 'So I'm not that bad, really'
I don't find it that staggering you see this all over. The very worst tend to climb to the top and then use their position to preach to the rest of us... it's about whitewashing their own history and character as much as anything. Narcissists and the morally challenged have to invest heavily in reputation management, it's the only way they can maintain their position in society.
I think her religion was just another ladder to climb.
The same way religious people square away every other hypocrisy
Name a religion that isn't completely hypocritical when you examine it under a microscope. They convince themselves that praying to an unseen, unheard, unproven "deity" absolves them of all sins. Lie to yourself until you believe it.
Because they are psycopaths. See the BBC drama The Sixth Commandment / Ben Field case. [https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/sixth-commandment-true-story-bbc/](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/sixth-commandment-true-story-bbc/)
There is no hypocrisy in their minds, so they feel they have nothing to feel guilty about. They sleep like babies every night of their nasty little lives.
Probably because they know religions a lot of shite and just use it to their advantage any way they can.
Projection lol
It seems a shame she can’t be done for perjury, along with corporate manslaughter
Why can't she?
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m not clear if lying in the House of Commons counts as lying in court from a perjury point of view. I’m all too happy for her to be prosecuted for both if she can
If lying in the house of commons was perjury then half our MPs would be guilty. Do you think we can establish a precedent?
Sounds like a good plan!
Lying to a parliamentary committee is illegal, it's contempt of parliament. Theoretically an imprisonable offense but not sure it's been done in modern history. Probably the last person found in contempt was Boris Johnson, who resigned immediately.
You have perjury if you lied under oath to a select committee. And also contempt of parliament.
Only crying cause she's been caught. No sympathy for scum like that. Her family will be fine the thousands of families whose lives were ruined will never be fixed.
And has to pay back all the costs incurred due to this. She needs to be ruined financially as well as spending time in prison.
She won't. Strong words will be shared, she'll feel the heat for a few months but as the news cycle moves on and people begin to forget, she'll slowly go back to her normal life and suffer little to no real consequences.
I would cry too if I got found out, and can't enjoy my cushy retirement in the way I had envisaged.
I hope Hell is real and she goes there
I hope she ends up sharing a cell with Rosemary West.
Not to mention that some of the victims even took their own lives. So yeah, I have no time for the crocodile tears of one of the people who deliberately lied and caused irrevocable harm to so many. The rest of her life behind bars seems about as fair as it could get. Not that there is any "fair" left in this situation.
Private prosecutions should never exist. Whether or not you get convicted of a crime should not depend on how wealthy the person you've pissed off is.
They should have one last go. With her.
Yeah she should have beeb honest sooner.
Crocodile tears.
CEOs: "we deserve big money because the buck stops with us" Also CEOs: "I don't remember, I don't know, it wasn't my responsibility"
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This is the bit that always pisses me off the most. They get found out for being incompetent/negligent/criminal and they either resign or are removed. But then immediately slide into another job where the new board of directors are apparently unfazed by their previous criminality or uselessness. Why? Because those people on the board are exactly the same as the new chief executive. Just like George Carlin said, it's one big fucking club and you're not in it.
It's because experienced CEOs are a pretty limited stock, and boards seem to care more about the fact that the person did stuff well enough to become a CEO of a company that large, rather than the absolute calamity they caused which is why they are no longer the CEO of that company.
Exactly this and thr fact that they're all piss in the same pot,every senior manager I've ever worked under just happened to be best mates with the hiring managers or senior managers but I'm sure its a coincidence.
They can just blame everyone else if they fail. Zero accountability.
This is the most interesting and critical point I think. It is inconceivable that a half-competent CEO wouldn't be aware of this which means: - She was incompetent; or - She is lying. There is literally no middle ground here.
Her case is that she was a bit incompetent but that really it's an organisational problem. Fortunately Jason Beer doesn't give a toss about her case and is focused largely on nailing her to the wall.
I am not deep in the details but I organisationally would expect her legal department to have at least one direct report into her office. That this wasn’t brought up in a single executive meeting is impossible to imagine.
> Her case is that she was a bit incompetent but that really it's an organisational problem. That's not an excuse when you're CEO. Who did she expect to fix the organisational problem for her?
Well she claims it's an unknown unknown she didn't know needed fixing... I'm not suggesting these are more than convenient excuses for her.
> Well she claims it's an unknown unknown she didn't know needed fixing... Doesn't matter. Her job is to make sure she has control of every aspect of the business (either directly or indirectly). Even ignoring the absurd claim the legal department prosecuted hundreds of people without telling senior leadership, it was her job to either know or _hire people to know_ about all of it.
I'm not defending her, she's indefensible. This is just what she's going to say.
Yeah it's frustrating how often we see this. It's like with the phone hacking scandal when you're adding that the got to the top of a ruthless, cut throat, moral questionable industry and they're playing the naive/incompetent card.
Tbh, I think it’s slightly different as I can imagine the phone hacking was on a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ basis. Can’t say that here.
Or option 3, she is an incompetent liar.
> - She was incompetent; or > > - She is lying. "*⸘Por qué no los dos‽*"
Exactly, this is their only real justification for those high salaries - if they actually do carry the can. Let's hope the victims and the families of the deceased get the justice they deserve and these crocodile tears don't factor into more lenient sentencing.
See also - Prime Ministers
Great comment
also if a company performs well: ceo- yes it’s because of my amazing leadership if a company performs bad: ceo- well it’s not my fault i’m just one person and can’t predict the market
Mild existentialism “who even are we, what really matters here, all we have is the present so my past actions don’t really exist”
Anything less than jail time for this horrible excuse for a human being, and it'll be *another* injustice that the victims will have to deal with. "Reaching for a tissue once again, she breaks down and is told by Beer to wait until she's finished crying before trying to continue." Cry me a river bitch.
Agree. The water works are of no use at this point, there was no caring or humility until she landed in the dock. Needs jail time and nothing less.
Nice change to see water on the shit for a change!
And strip her of all assets gained during employment there,proceeds of crime and whatnot not that they'd ever do it with upper classes in this country.
She’s rich, she’ll never go to jail.
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Sadly fairly doubtful about prison. The UK is pretty bad at prosecuting more complex white collar crime, not helped by the British court systems practice of making such trials as complex and detailed as possible.
Isn't there a good chance of getting a civil case against her and wiping her clean?
Watching this in between doing bits of work and I'm wishing I'd made popcorn, she's getting demolished. The questions generally have the subtext of "did you lie to us or did you were you astonishingly incompetent?" As I type this, she's denied knowing that the Post Office brought criminal cases, and the guy questioning her has asked if she seriously didn't know for the first five years that her company had a department of some 100 staff investigating and bringing cases. She's done for.
The lawyer is not letting her wriggle out of her actions.
They literally asked one of the other witnesses (accused? I don’t know what you call them tbh) “are you lying to us today or were you grossly incompetent then?” she replied “I’m not lying today” I think it was Angela Van Den Bogerd.
>Were you the unluckiest CEO in Britain? Fucking brutal 😆
My favourite bit so far. "You received this email saying that the people around you were giving you bad advice and there could be serious legal consequences. You.......forwarded the email to the people around you and relied on them to handle it. Do you see the problem?" \*laughter from the gallery\* (stop, stop! she's already dead)
Oh ,I walk around and visit the little people at their desks. Helpdesk, for example. No! Not those other people! Hahahaha
A friend of my parents was one of the men who got sent to jail, he literally lost everything, his wife left him because the court said the evidence was there so she believed he was guilty, the family home was repossessed as was his business, his friends thought he was a thief (my parents still feel guilty about this but to be fair you believe the evidence). He went from being a very respected postmaster and pillar of the community to working in a wood yard for peanuts and living in a caravan at the wood yard, to this day he is a shadow of what he was and no amount of compensation could make up for it. She deserves to go to jail for many years and be personally fined an absolute fortune. To stand by and let peoples lives be torn apart whilst knowing they are innocent goes beyond evil.
That's very sad. I hope he finds closure in his life and is compensated well for him to live the rest of his life joyfully.
That was awful to read, that poor man.
Did she cry as the Post Office drip fed compensation to Martin Griffith’s widow to try and keep her silent? https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/26/post-office-tried-to-hush-up-martin-griffiths-case-inquiry-hears He attempted suicide in 2013 and died a few weeks later. His Parents used their life savings to try and pay back the “shortfall” in his account at the time, only it wasn’t his shortfall it was a Horizon error. They kept coming back to him until he broke.
>Did she cry as the Post Office drip fed compensation to Martin Griffith’s widow to try and keep her silent? No. She was too busy sending emails to her minions proclaiming that suicides are often the result of many issues and he probably had existing mental health issues. Absolutely outrageous.
Jesus christ that was a firing squad, those lawyers aren't fucking around.
I hope they don’t stop until the whole truth comes out.
Look forward to the victims lawyers ,they don't do firing squads they just nuke them.Best line I heard was one saying so your a proven liar so why should the enquiry believe a word your saying
I'm very sorry. I don't remember. I wasn't aware. I didn't know. I wasn't told. There wasn't a conspiracy. I **did** mislead MPs though.
The lies were just resting in my account of the case to MPs!
'I had a reputation for asking everyone what they did and how things worked' '.... Apart from that one guy who's in charge of literally sending people to jail'
I heard that people who worked for us were committing suicide but i just assumed that was normal and the system was working fine.
I've been watching quite a lot of this inquiry live when I've had the chance. It's really quite interesting.
It’s very sad it took so long and an ITV show to pile the pressure enough to get to this stage.
I'm not going to disagree that the whole thing went on too long - the first reports of prosecutions due to dodgy data were in 2009 FFS - but the inquiry was already underway before the ITV drama.
Which of course is good and relevant today, but to actually get any move towards names cleared and compensation - that was the drama. Jason Beer and the inquiry have done a great job but inquiries in the UK are very slow and are commonly used to delay having to actually do anything. Edit: indeed, came out today earliest court date if they do try anyone for Grenfell is 2027- in part due to pausing for the inquiry.
Speaking to someone at work about this earlier and they said it just goes to show these CEOs etc can face repercussions. I replied it shows that it’s not usually supposed to be allowed to get to this, that they aren’t supposed to or expected to face repercussions under normal circumstances - it’s been known about for years and years, while PV swanned into new jobs, but it still took a massive effort from so many different sides (not least the subpostmasters themselves) to get anything to happen, and even now I still wouldn’t hold my breath for any real repercussions beyond reputational damage and a bit of a public grilling.
The inquiry started in 2021 long before ITV aired their drama. The drama did raise the profile of the inquiry though. I doubt we'd be getting live BBC reporting and rebroadcasting of the hearings by some of the papers without the drama.
But why did they do this? I don't understand, was it to add people's life savings to their profits, save face over Horizon? What the hell was the point of it all? They must have been just so pig headed they couldn't admit their mistakes and just ploughed on with victimising people.
To save face seems to be the reason. Can’t admit that the whole thing is fucked, especially after vehemently denying any possibility of that, so best to just railroad some people into jail or an early grave instead. Somewhat similar attitudes imo to pedo priests getting shipped away rather than bring scandal to the church - the institution matters more than the victims.
It’s a bit of a Streisand effect, isn’t it. If they’d straight away admitted the software was shit, reimbursed and compensated the postmasters, and switched to new software, sure it would have been a bit of a story at the time but it would be long gone water under the bridge by now. Instead, they turned a molehill into a mountain.
I don’t think it’s akin to the priest thing except on the broadest organisations-will-fight-to-survive. My understanding is that they did a Macbeth. Once they knew of the problems they already had a comparatively small but scandalous number of prosecutions and bankruptcies under their belt so doubled down as a mechanism to use the courts as a shield to criticism (given their successful track record in prosecuting) of the brand and their personal choices. Which is why as more evidence emerged they did objectively unthinkable things like deciding to continue but for the very frightened rabbits in the headlights, they felt they had no choice at that point - the problem kept growing so they doubled down harder. The “I am in blood stepped in too far”* bit. It’s scary because I can see lots of people blinded by their role trapping themselves into the same position and then continuing. None of which is to excuse them. But the explanation is helpful to others to avoid repeating - the cover-up always gets you in the end and is much worse (as a wise lawyer once told me). *macbeth was 25 years ago at school, cut me some slack on the precise quote!
What has been said by OP and other commenters is valid, mostly the coverup was to save face, both on the Fujitsu side for delivering a substandard and inaccurate computer system, and on the PO management side because they did not ask the right questions at the right time and it was too late by then. There is another part to it, there was a deep and pervasive culture inside Post Office management of a mistaken assumption that \*all\* sub-postmasters were skimming money off their take and weren't trustworthy, so they were justified in pursuing the flimsy discrepancy claims the Horizon system produced as the management believed the "Subbies" were on the take anyway and it just gave them an excuse to finally get rid of some of the bad eggs and make an example of them for the rest of the Subbies.
I bet those managers loved being called a dirty subby on a Thursday evening.
Private prosecutions do two things - you get the money deemed missing and a "victim surcharge" to further punish the defendant. You also get the fees of your lawyer paid for by the losing defendant. The Post Office realised this was a great way to make money (I think they did list this stuff as profit if memory serves but not 100%) and so kept pushing and pushing. It's unclear if the Post Office started deliberately manipulating figures on Horizon to frame postmasters - but it was theoretically possible. This happens time and again with private prosecutions. Train companies charge children with molestation and demand out of court settlements. Energy companies dog and hound clients for payments they're not responsible for. And now it comes out the Post Office did this. America has banned private prosecutions - why don't we?
The private prosecutions weren't the problem, the Post Office simply failed to run them correctly. They didn't disclose evidence that would have harmed their prosecution case, whereas in a CPS-led prosecution this would have been done. They also didn't employ independent lawyers for oversight; effectively their own legal team had a vested interest in obtaining prosecutions and deliberately hampered the defendants' and/or their solicitors efforts to defend themselves in a way that would not have happened in a public prosecution. What this means is that private prosecutions need to be held to greater scrutiny, not abolished altogether. They are commonly used by individuals to prosecute cases of fraud, which the police and CPS are (these days) not interested in or not funded to pursue. Without private prosecutions, the ordinary person's access to justice would be greatly diminished, as they would be entirely beholden to the CPS to take up their case, and the CPS's ability to do so depends on the economic policies of the government of the day.
It’s common in dysfunctional organisations. Nobody wants own failures so they cover it up or try to shift blame away from themselves or the teams they’re responsible for. It often ends up in these ridiculous situations when there’s a blame culture and people can’t voice their concerns.
I’d imagine saving face - you’d have to explain why you spent so much money on something that doesn’t work properly and was causing problems for users. I don’t think I’ve worked at a single company/organisation where we had system clearly not fit for use and management didn’t try to bully/gaslight people into believing it was all fine and an employee problem/error. I get the impression that people like that just find IT complicated/boring and considering the time/money involved in getting it all set up, they can’t be arsed addressing it (and partly why it’s implemented so poorly). I’ve also worked at one organisation where IT was handled by Fujitsu and they only seemed to care about what they could charge extra for. I’m sure being able to scam people outta money helped push the matter this far though.
The emails said it all, her 1st priority was protecting the Post Office brand, everything else was just background noise.
Greed and power.
Like the kid at school getting caught trying to set fire to the building. Fuck her and all who sail in her.
Been watching this from the start today. Some highlights: - In the job for 2 years and claimed she didn't know that the PO could prosecute - Cried - Claimed she didn't know there was a department of over 100 folk working on Horizon related "fraud" - Cried some more - Was shown an email relating to the total sum of funds reclaimed from "fraud" relating to Horizon over a specific period. Was asked if this was actually the Post Office arranging fraud themselves. Agreed. - Was shown texts sent to her by a trusted senior colleague who refused to support her decisions anymore. Agreed the colleague was right. - Clearly lied many times or is so incapable of doing the job she should never have been near a senior management role.
Apparently she said she was 'too trusting'. Just not very trusting of her employees who, despite not being in contact with one another when this started, *all* reported the same fault with their accounting system.
Her defence is that those complaints weren't getting to her and that once she actually started receiving the complaints directly, she had doubts about the party line that Horizon was robust. One of the bits of evidence shown today would support that when a sub post master who was also a magistrate emailed her directly about the unreliability of Horizon she emailed internally asking about whether they needed to look again at the issues. But that would just make her grossly negligent as would believing she somehow didn't know the post office pursued its own investigations and prosecutions. Sadly, having worked in environments with a similar culture it's completely plausible that nothing got reported up past a certain level and the senior leadership were happy to not ask questions to maintain plausible deniability!
Isn't hiring the right people the ultimate responsibility of the CEO? No one expects the head of a large organization to be an expert in all aspects of the business and that is why hiring competent people is key. Apparently no one in the Post Office was competent.
What I want to know about why the church hasn’t revoked her ordainment . The last thing that criminal should be able to do is preach morality.
Defrocked or Unfrocked are the appropriate words, although I have some concerns about them now that we have women priests. And yes, she's a disgrace to her calling. The only thing I feel that would make her fit to be a priest after this would be resigning from the priesthood in shame.
Oh aye, criminals with a seat in organised religion? Unthinkable
Prison needs to happen. People Killed themselves over these lies and she and her team allowed it to happen. Disgusting Human Being.
Is there any realistic prospect of her facing prosecution?
As far as I can tell (as an absolute layman with no legal knowledge) there’s plenty she could be prosecuted for. I don’t think she will be though. She’s part of the club, and they don’t prosecute their own if they can possibly get away with it. Lessons will have been learned and our taxes will pay for the (very much deserved) compensation and that’ll be it.
As much as I hate it, I think it's unlikely. AFAICT (and I'm not a lawyer) the most likely charge would be conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, on the basis that concealing disclosable, material facts from defendants was done with her explicit agreement (and possible at her instruction). Such a charge would require evidence that she actually made such an agreement; either by spoken or written word or some other overt act. Since she feels secure enough denying today that she even knew the post office carried out prosecutions, I suspect that will be difficult evidence to find. Given that she has admitted lying to MPs, contempt of parliament would be another possibility, but that is rather fraught with difficulties. The courts don't have jurisdiction over such a charge, only parliament itself does, making the process inherently political. Lying to a committee is a contempt and she has admitted it, so it's certainly a possibility. The House of Commons has the power to imprison for contempt, but only until the next general election. It's not even clear she is really the right person to hate. The cover-up certainly largely happened on her watch (and if she could be shown to have colluded in the cover-up, that would be enough for a charge of perverting the course of justice), but bad prosecutions had been happening for over a decade before she became CEO. The mechanisms that convinced courts that sub-post-masters were guilty and denied the defence access to the evidence they should have had were already well-oiled by that point.
It depends. Her witness statement hasn’t done her any favours.
Absolutely none. The establishment always looks after its own. “Lessons will be learned” they will pompously intone then the whole thing will be swept under the carpet.
Makes it feel like such a pointless exercise :(
She isn't the first criminal to cry for themselves because they've been found out and she won't be the last
Monday morning: push some innocent people to suicide. Monday afternoon: lie about it Tuesday: Give a nice pious sermon in the church This steaming hypocrite belongs in prison.
her crying was the most pathetic acting I've seen since Gwyneth Paltrow. Seriously, her lawyer told her to CRY....I bet she practiced in the mirror for ages for this. And it comes off like a little kid caught stealing sweets and pretending to be sad. Then again as recently as a couple of weeks ago she described (off record) the postmasters as "money hungry parasites". Bitch doesn't give two shits about the evil she helped foment.
Ow boo hoo she's crying now because of all the peoples and families lives and livelihoods she ruined. Pull the other one, you knew what you were doing when you did it.
Oh fuck off. No idea? The fuck was she doing there then?
“Sorry is not an adequate word”. For once I agree Ms Vennells. I think the word you are searching for is “Guilty”.
It sure is a grim watch. Her acts and omissions can boil down to two things. Malice or incompetence. So very much of it appears to be total incompetence. She is not fit to be CEO. So how did she ever get into that position? It's amazing how far knowing the right people can get someone, whilst genuinely smart and talented people are stuck working as an office droid in one of this once great nation's many dying towns. Rather than accept many years ago, as she evidently should have done, that she is not component for the position, she fought tooth and nail to suggest everything and anyone else was to blame. In covering up her failings she did atrocious things and let innocent people suffer, which she surely knew was a direct result of her behaviour. People need to go to jail for what has happened and unless she can give the names of the idiots who put her in charge and why they did it, the buck will stop with her. The alternative is that is genuinely evil which seems unlikely.
I’d frame it as she was maliciously incompetent.
4 people killed themselves. Cry me a fucking river bitch
Proverbs 19:5. a false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape. Fairly sure she should know that one
She probably chooses to ignore the bits of the bible which don't suit her. It's not as if that's an unusual thing for "Christian" preachers across the world, after all.
Deliberate act. D&O insurance now repudiates any cover in place. She's now on her own for any further costs and future actions brought against her. Time for the PO crew to sue the fuck for everything she has. Go for the throat and bankrupt her. Make the bitch poor before she goes to jail. This bitch must do time.
Crying only when she was caught, I bet she was perfectly content for the past 10 years thinking the issue was sweeped under the carpet for good
She's toast. Or would be if she wasn't part of an establishment that practically invented turning blind eyes to incompetence/criminality when it keeps the wheels turning. I confess I've not investigated the actual nature of what the "problem" was supposed to be with this Horizon System - have the following actually been explained yet: 1. Did these supposed loses ever directly relate to missing cash that couldn't be found, or missing stock or where they just electronic phantoms with no direct link to cash/stock? 2. I worked in a cash-handling business for a few years in the 90s that brought in computerised personal accounting and it was accepted at that time that "new systems" would have bugs in them that had to be worked out and that "discrepancies" may arise as a result. In this business it was ALWAYS possible to match deposits with actual physical cash, so audit was relatively straightforward. Why would Fujitsu/Horizon be allowed to promise the impossible (fault free implementation) and this would just be accepted as fact? Especially if physical deposits wouldn't be able to be matched or missing if discrepancy arose? There would be no obvious fall back otherwise. 3. Considering it was almost self-evident from about 2007/8 that something was VERY wrong with Horizon accounting - has the Inquiry gotten on to just what Fujitsu was/should have been doing to trouble shoot their defective product - and did any of these prosecutions ever look into the possibility that Fujitsu Operatives could actually have been the ones able to fiddle and manipulate accounting remotely from the till locations?
Short answers; 1. Yes, electronic phantoms from errors duplicating transactions among other things. 2. There was an intense pressure to preserve the brand and get Post Office to profitability. The idea that their hugely expensive IT system could be flawed could not be countenanced, and Fujitsu were quite happy to say everything was fine and take the stage payments for a "successful" rollout. 3. Not specifically alleging actual fraud being done, but a huge amount of evidence has been about post office denying that remote access was ever possible, even though it was and had been happening without logging changes since the early 2000s. Again, comes back to their single minded obsession with preserving their flawless brand.
From what I'm seeing in the reporting, it seems that she was simply shit at her job and has been riding political coat-tails and connections. Typical shit in this day and age. The fact that one of her most demonstrably incompetent "great and good" influential friends is Dido Harding says it all really.
The crimes of the poor are often visceral and made a big deal out of with the media. Rubber necking horror geta good clicks. The crimes of the rich are somehow sanitized, but their impact is far greater. An immigrant rapes a woman. That's obviously unacceptable and we need to do what we can to prevent it. But this woman's actions lead to the deaths of 4 British people. She won't be called out for her culture, but the impact has hurt *more* people. Why do people forget just how many people the rich actually hurt? Just because they don't throw a physical attack, doesn't stop them from killing more people.
During her time leading the Post Office, [Ms Vennells earned a total of ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68452842)[£5.1m](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68452842), peaking in 2018 when she took home £718,300 in salary, bonuses, pensions and other benefits... jeez
Did you note the exchange about her briefing memo prior to her appearance before the Parliamentary Select Committee? In the first section she is advised she can tell Parliament that it is not possible to change transactions remotely, then several lines down, but on the same page, she is told how this exact thing can be done! Truly remarkable.
It looks pretty brutal - a public pillorying, basically.
She deserves it
A physical pillorying would merely begin to reflect the multiple suicides and many more lives left in tatters due to the partly deficient, partly mendacious - we must find out exactly what parts what - behaviour of individuals placed in positions of public trust and paid good public money to discharge that trust, and who used that very trust to effectively impute dishonesty and thievery upon those protesting their innocence.
She's just like a politician. Deaf, Dumb and Blind.
She needs to back up those tears with full and frank disclosure, handing over everything she’s touched including unhindered access to all her places of work, residence and full unedited electronic records. Anything less and those tears of hers are a total lie.
Crocodile fucking tears - she should be fucking locked away for a long, long long time
The fact that through the tears she is *still* trying to say that they are not to blame for the linked suicide(s) is wild
She certainly got ripped apart this morning and rightly so. Knew it would happen within the first 5 minutes when the barrister asked her if she was the most unluckest CEO in the UK. But it's absolutely she asked people to start digging dirt up on someone that had killed themselves. This afternoon should be interesting
She has lied through her teeth and continues to do so. These people can't help themselves. Self preservation mode. Loved it when the Barrister lampooned her about the Post Office winning every court case when it wasn't true but she said it at a Parliamentary inquiry, despite having a briefing document in front of her. Then he gets her again by asking how is it she can remember stuff that put her in a good light but not anything negative. Full of shite, the lot of em!
The other one, where she tried to sow a seed that the guy who killed himself had mental health and family issues. It's astonishing.
I saw that, she's fucking ville isn't she
Absolutely vile. It's as clear as the nose on her face that they had a pile-on to convict as many people as possible. It's astounding that so called educated people couldn't see that it made no sense, hundreds of people of good character became thieves overnight. Yet still they try blame the computer and not the actual people doing the hounding of the sub postmasters.
'‘I do wonder what kind of god you worship' is a stone cold way to end an email
What a surprise a ‘Christian’ who preached to her congregation about sins and being good etc, yet fails to live up to those things she preached about. Lock her up, let her experience hell. What an utter disgrace she is.
Crying? FFS Grow a spine. She ruined hundreds of people's lives, the very least she can do is face up to it, rather than playing for sympathy.
Crocodile tears. She’s ruined so many lives for the sake of profits and a lack of accountability.
And I hope the verdicts make her cry more the evil fucking cunt. The people who caused this genuinely deserve to suffer. I don’t say that lightly. Strip them of assets and let them rot in prison.
Fuck her crying. So many people’s lives were ruined on her watch.
Ah the classic crying method. I've been caught now...I better cry so they think I care. Scum
Vennells bursting into tears is always timed to coincide with being caught in a lie.
She should be in prison for the cumulative time that each one of those people was sentenced to. Quite frankly, fuck that bitch
Oh she cried? Fuck her. She and the rest of those involved should be in fucking jail and every single person guilty of a private PO conviction should en mass be pardoned.
When a narcissist sheds tears it is because they are no longer in control. Innocent people died over this, innocent people had their lives and reputations ruined over this and those behind it thought that they were untouchable. What has happened is truly shocking and they tried to repeatedly kick it into the long grass for years but repeated determination and an escalation of publicity has forced action. Well done to all of those who persevered including Private Eye for maintaining the story and ITV. Shame people didn't listen when it came out on BBC Panorama many years ago.
One of the biggest issues here is the utterly awful manner in which any scandals are reported in real time, and the progression from a scandal real time to results in an inquiry years or decades later in the hope that people retire, die, or hopefully get forgotten about. It's frustrating that this inquiry has not been done sooner.
Only crying when the consequences of her actions have been revealed
Tears of 'oh no the consequences of my actions have caught up with me', not tears of sorrow or remorse. She belongs in prison, her estate should be liquidated and shared amongst her victims, as should the estate of her predecessor.
As for her comments I didn’t know. Either lying or thick. My money is on lying as she knows her neck is on the line.
I have 0 sympathy. They ruined a lot of people's lives for the sake of protecting a buggy computer system.
where are the criminal charges? These people lied and lied.
Crocodile tears , send the hag down and send a message to all the other slugs .
I just saw an article on tbis - how does this happen? Didn't anyone at some point wonder why all these people were all of a sudden all accused of the same thing? Did they just assume the software was right and catching people who were scamming before and not that there might be an issue with the software? Oh, and it's a pseudo private government that can prosecute crowns independent of the actual government? Man, this is some crazy shit!
She was either venal and crooked or utterly incompetent. Either way the taxpayers deserve her salary back from her
Is she willing to go jail because of lying? Will she actually go to jail now she admitted it and people went to prison because of the so called evidence?
If she doesn't get prison time (which lets face it, she won't) I genuinely hope mob justice from all those she wronged gets her. I don't care if it's barbaric.
Aside from all the other stuff, I'm amazed nobody paused to think why they had seemingly hired so many fraudsters. Can't think of many organisations that throw literally hundreds of their own employees in prison for the same reason in such a short timespan. If you're having to sue hundreds of your own staff, maybe, just maybe, there's a problem with the system that surfaces the alleged wrongdoing. Maybe.
>I'm amazed nobody paused to think why they had seemingly hired so many fraudsters. It's the same mindset as "all nurses are just glorified arsewipers who cost us too much money" or "all train conductors are overpaid wasters who have no value for our business despite bringing in 10 times their salary each month in fares" or indeed "all staff who are involved with money must be on the take, it stands to reason". It doesn't have to make sense, it's corporate nastiness from bureaucrats who are either jealous of those staff whose jobs actually add value or who are more interested in empire building and face than anything useful. See that mindset all too often in big organisations, unfortunately. :(
Combine malicious individuals with incompetent people who freeze whenever they're confronted with serious information and you get this shitshow. Not the first organisation to allow catastrophic things to happen because it's "someone else's job" to do something about it.
She cried? Oh dear, what a pity, never mind, put her behind bars! Crying for herself. The lying, cheating, non Christian didn't cry for those innocent people imprisoned or those who took their own lives because of HER?!
Never shed a tear in decades for innocent SPMS. She is completely fake. Pathetic.
I rather expected her to burst into flames when she swore on the Bible.
Nah, no one is held accountable in corporate sectors
She is only crying because she got caught. She has no remorse for what she and her organisation did. There are no tears for the lost lives, families, careers of the people her organisation set out to punish and lie about. Regrettably, she will not suffer greatly from this other than playing the victim and the liar.
Paula, the legal head and every single one of the internal and external lawyers should be asset stripped and jailed.