Post Office Enquiry (Paula Vennells on 22-24 May)

Vennells gives evidence in May. One hopes that the police will start questioning and charging some people soon. The public enquiry seems like it has accumulated plenty of evidence for them. Mind you, the Met haven't the best track record themselves!
 
Hearing some of these executives, I start to wonder why we are having a public enquiry and not a police investigation. Fraud, perjury, blackmail, withholding evidence, how much more evidence is needed?
 
Tangerinemoss said:
Hearing some of these executives, I start to wonder why we are having a public enquiry and not a police investigation. Fraud, perjury, blackmail, withholding evidence, how much more evidence is needed?
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If you have not already seen it watch on YouTube the evidence to the enquiry of the Area Manager, Elaine Cottam, in relation to the Cleveleys sub-postmistress case. It is a truly staggering performance.
 
Tangerinemoss said:
Hearing some of these executives, I start to wonder why we are having a public enquiry and not a police investigation. Fraud, perjury, blackmail, withholding evidence, how much more evidence is needed?
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As I understand it, it's the PO Board that is vicariously liable. The questioning so far has been building a case to put the Board in precisely that position. Any prosecutions will follow from that.
 
bfcpete said:
Vennells gives evidence in May. One hopes that the police will start questioning and charging some people soon. The public enquiry seems like it has accumulated plenty of evidence for them. Mind you, the Met haven't the best track record themselves!
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The CPS will not prosecute until the public inquiry has reported formally with all loose ends tied up. That could be at least another two years yet. However, the police are already investigating but will not question anybody until after they have given evidence.

The problem is that the public inquiry chairman might decide he wants to later recall some senior wrong’uns for further evidence, so the police will hold back. The last thing the inquiry chairman wants is witnesses taking the 5th. Mind you, they have already virtually adopted that strategy with “I can’t remember”.

I expect this to drag out another five years or more before anyone sees bare walls and barred windows. In that ongoing period a fair few older subpostmasters will be denied seeing justice done, by dying themselves.
 
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bfcpete said:
If you have not already seen it watch on YouTube the evidence to the enquiry of the Area Manager, Elaine Cottam, in relation to the Cleveleys sub-postmistress case. It is a truly staggering performance.
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The other stand out is Jarnail Singh who was Head of Criminal Law at POL whilst claiming not to be a specialist in that area of the law
He also denied drafting certain emails despite them containing his trademark spelling and punctuation errors
 
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TwelveAngryMen said:
The other stand out is Jarnail Singh who was Head of Criminal Law at POL whilst claiming to be a specialist in that area of the law
He also denied drafting certain emails despite them containing his trademark spelling and punctuation errors
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Jarnail Singh due on Friday… Cartwright King the other days…
 
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Nick Wallis’ blogs are available here, usually updated daily...
www.postofficescandal.uk

Post Office Scandal

Reporting the Post Office Horizon IT Scandal
www.postofficescandal.uk www.postofficescandal.uk

Here is the link to the reporting of Jarnail Singh’s evidence given on 1st December last year...
www.postofficescandal.uk

More Singh’d against than Singh-ing

There has been some rank incompetence on display from various Post Office witnesses over the course of this inquiry, but I think we’ll have to go some way to find a worse performance than thi…
www.postofficescandal.uk www.postofficescandal.uk
 
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bfcpete said:
If you have not already seen it watch on YouTube the evidence to the enquiry of the Area Manager, Elaine Cottam, in relation to the Cleveleys sub-postmistress case. It is a truly staggering performance.
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Saw that, what a piece of work. Any normal functioning company manager wouldn't have had her running a stationary room, she was responsible for over a 100 branches, how was that possible she could barely string two coherent words together.
 
When the prosecutions commence, they will have to start with those middle managers like Jarnail Singh and then gradually work their way up the tree.

It might look a bit harsh at the start, with the underlings being prosecuted first, but all the evidence they offer in their defences (“only following orders”) will be gold in the subsequent prosecutions of the top brass, who will undoubtedly try deflection to blame their employees for exceeding their authority.

The top brass rarely sign any paperwork for initiating court cases (or for anything else) so we need their employees on oath first for that evidence.
 
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Archibald Knox said:
When the prosecutions commence, they will have to start with those middle managers like Jarnail Singh and then gradually work their way up the tree.

It might look a bit harsh at the start, with the underlings being prosecuted first, but all the evidence they offer in their defences (“only following orders”) will be gold in the consequent prosecutions of the top brass, who will undoubtedly try deflection to blame their employees for exceeding their authority.

The top brass rarely sign any paperwork for initiating court cases, so we need their employees on oath first for that evidence.
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See mine at #159.
 
Archibald Knox said:
When the prosecutions commence, they will have to start with those middle managers like Jarnail Singh and then gradually work their way up the tree.

It might look a bit harsh at the start, with the underlings being prosecuted first, but all the evidence they offer in their defences (“only following orders”) will be gold in the consequent prosecutions of the top brass, who will undoubtedly try deflection to blame their employees for exceeding their authority.

The top brass rarely sign any paperwork for initiating court cases, so we need their employees on oath first for that evidence.
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Following orders means that orders have been given from higher up. If people can prove that, their goose is cooked, regardless of their failure to recall anything.
 
Tangerinemoss said:
Hearing some of these executives, I start to wonder why we are having a public enquiry and not a police investigation. Fraud, perjury, blackmail, withholding evidence, how much more evidence is needed?
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They’ll probably now not be charged, with their lawyers claiming they won’t get a fair trial.
 
traffordtang said:
They’ll probably now not be charged, with their lawyers claiming they won’t get a fair trial.
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Oh yes they will. Which is why the chairman of the public inquiry, Sir Wyn Williams, has been meticulous in formally warning witnesses about their rights against self-incrimination in the evidence they are about to provide.
 
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Towerpower99 said:
Jarnail Singh due on Friday… Cartwright King the other days…
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Cartwright King is the lawyers’ company that Singh instructed to carry out all the admin to send the SPMs to trial. Their evidence versus Singh’s should be interesting. It’s a shame that Singh is not up first.
Edit: On second thoughts maybe it’s better he follows the lawyers as he will have to respond to their assertions.
 
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Tangerinemoss said:
Was watching the head of legal in my lunchtime, it's strangely addictive watching these KCs at work, slowly and quietly building the evidence despite the obvious lack of cooperation.

On a plus, it is great to see all these poeple with impaired memories managing to achieve such highly paid jobs.
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I think the post office should be applauded and their management recruitment process handed over to medical science.

It seems that they have found a way to specifically select people with early onset dementia....
 
Singh is literally unbelievable. He waffles along creating his own bear traps. At one point concerning the Misra trial (pregnant SPM sentenced to 15 months in jail) he says it was his first trial so he was so focused on it and had to deal with all the documents for the trial “in a careful and methodical way”.

So Jason Beer KC asks “So you would have read this email ‘carefully and methodically’, which you saved and printed three days before the Misra trial commenced, as it detailed the Horizon bugs which were at the core of the Misra trial ? (my paraphrasing). Singh: “Errrr, no. I have no recall of this email or its attached documents.”

“So who printed it?” “My secretary”. “So you told her to print this email and docs? Why?” “Errrr... I can’t remember”.

Good job we have very thorough IT records then !
 
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Archibald Knox said:
Singh is literally unbelievable. He waffles along creating his own bear traps. At one point concerning the Misra trial (pregnant woman sent to jail) he says it was his first trial so he was so focused on it and had to deal with all the documents for the trial “in a careful and methodical way”.

So Jason Beer asks “So you would have read this email, which you saved and printed three days before the Misra trial commenced, carefully and methodically as it detailed the Horizon bugs which were at the core of the Misra trial ? (my paraphrasing). Singh: “Errrr, no. I have no recall of this email or it’s attached documents.”

“So who printed it?” “My secretary”. “So you told her to print this email and docs? Why?” “Errrr... “
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It’s astounding…..
 
Costero Poderoso said:
Saw that, what a piece of work. Any normal functioning company manager wouldn't have had her running a stationary room, she was responsible for over a 100 branches, how was that possible she could barely string two coherent words together.
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Being charitable, it's possible that time is catching up with her, perhaps a stroke, early dementia, who knows, maybe she was a bit more on the ball 15 years ago.

The sheer number of witnesses who appear to be total morons suggests not.
 
The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. Multiple people having multiple opportunities to stop wrongful convictions, and every one of them didn't. Not only that, but nobody seemed to read any emails, ever, at the top of the Post Office. How dumb do they think we are?
I've no idea how they could all sleep at night with the knowledge that their silence meant people were being sent to prison for something they didn't do. It's incomprehensible.
 
BFC_53 said:
The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. Multiple people having multiple opportunities to stop wrongful convictions, and every one of them didn't. Not only that, but nobody seemed to read any emails, ever, at the top of the Post Office. How dumb do they think we are?
I've no idea how they could all sleep at night with the knowledge that their silence meant people were being sent to prison for something they didn't do. It's incomprehensible.
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They didn't think they'd get caught.
 
This public inquiry is proving that the Post Office was (is?) a criminal enterprise. An organised crime gang. Literally.

Extortion, demanding money with menaces, false imprisonment, conspiracy to pervert justice, perjury, falsification of official documents including court witness statements, suppression and non-disclosure of evidence, deletion of records etc.
If it was in the TV series “Line of Duty” it would stretch credibility.
 
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BFC_53 said:
The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. Multiple people having multiple opportunities to stop wrongful convictions, and every one of them didn't. Not only that, but nobody seemed to read any emails, ever, at the top of the Post Office. How dumb do they think we are?
I've no idea how they could all sleep at night with the knowledge that their silence meant people were being sent to prison for something they didn't do. It's incomprehensible.
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I just can’t fathom that not one single person involved in all this apparently refused to go along with the lies and subterfuge or spoke out publicly about what was going on. It’s like they were all collectively brainwashed. Where were the whistleblowers, how were they silenced. Like you said it’s incomprehensible.
 
It would seem to me to be a just scenario where Singh is put on trial and a jury is asked to consider the evidence he has presented today
 
BFC_53 said:
The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. Multiple people having multiple opportunities to stop wrongful convictions, and every one of them didn't. Not only that, but nobody seemed to read any emails, ever, at the top of the Post Office. How dumb do they think we are?
I've no idea how they could all sleep at night with the knowledge that their silence meant people were being sent to prison for something they didn't do. It's incomprehensible.
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In my experience almost all large companies are run in a similar manner, and have equal levels of incompetence. I had one client a government owned but independently operated company that refused to pay about half our fees despite the fees being signed off by an agreed third party. We were threatened with legal action, and that they would be able to influence court proceedings and judges. Eventually had to settle for about 25%. The interesting thing was after the settlement meeting, one of the participants called me to ask if we would do a project to review their internal ethics and anti corruption practices. The guy that called me had direct reporting to ministers, had no recognition of what had passed over the previous year.
 
Delfino said:
It would seem to me to be a just scenario where Singh is put on trial and a jury is asked to consider the evidence he has presented today
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Been watching/listening this morning, apparently Singh didn't know in 2006ish how to save a file in his computer. How does someone that dimwitted qualify as a solicitor? I know he's lying about that but how does he think it's believable?
 
Costero Poderoso said:
Been watching/listening this morning, apparently Singh didn't know in 2006ish how to save a file in his computer. How does someone that dimwitted qualify as a solicitor? I know he's lying about that but how does he think it's believable?
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TBF, solicitors, in my experience, tended to be somewhat behind the curve on IT, and I imagine that the PO was behind the curve even for solicitors.

2006 though, how does he remember to breathe in and out?
 
Costero Poderoso said:
Been watching/listening this morning, apparently Singh didn't know in 2006ish how to save a file in his computer. How does someone that dimwitted qualify as a solicitor? I know he's lying about that but how does he think it's believable?
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It was 2010. Also said he didn't know how to print either
 
This is in the Law Gazette on that

2.35pm: A major revelation and one of Singh's most uncomfortable moments so far. The inquiry sees an email chain where Post Office leaders are discussing whether to disclose investigators' reports as part of the mediation process in 2014.


Singh says that in relation to the former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton (pictured below), he had no doubt that disclosure would have been an 'extremely dangerous approach'. Hamilton was fighting to clear her name and clearly, suggests Beer, would have benefitted from knowing there were deficiencies in the case against her.

The solicitor tells the inquiry he had not even read the Hamilton file when he wrote this email. This prompts Beer and chair Sir Wyn Williams to ask incredulously how he could possibly have quoted directly from it if he had not read.

Singh takes long pauses as he tries to explain what was happening. He says this email was just him 'weighing' up the arguments over disclosure of investigators' reports.


Beer says this is proof of a cover-up, which Singh denies.
 
TwelveAngryMen said:
The guy appears to be a bare faced liar
When he was giving evidence last November, he was claiming that he hadn’t dictated emails even though they contained his trademark grammatical errors
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Yep, that's what I think, however I am interested in exploring how it could be "possible" that anything he says is true.

So far, the answer appears to be "not possible".
 
TwelveAngryMen said:
This is in the Law Gazette on that

2.35pm: A major revelation and one of Singh's most uncomfortable moments so far. The inquiry sees an email chain where Post Office leaders are discussing whether to disclose investigators' reports as part of the mediation process in 2014.


Singh says that in relation to the former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton (pictured below), he had no doubt that disclosure would have been an 'extremely dangerous approach'. Hamilton was fighting to clear her name and clearly, suggests Beer, would have benefitted from knowing there were deficiencies in the case against her.

The solicitor tells the inquiry he had not even read the Hamilton file when he wrote this email. This prompts Beer and chair Sir Wyn Williams to ask incredulously how he could possibly have quoted directly from it if he had not read.

Singh takes long pauses as he tries to explain what was happening. He says this email was just him 'weighing' up the arguments over disclosure of investigators' reports.


Beer says this is proof of a cover-up, which Singh denies.
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Singh's email started with 'having read the papers....' ... Sir Wyn picked him up on that too.
 
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