Morning

Whilst I should have probably have been watching the Inquiry yesterday, I took the afternoon off to go and see Make Good, the Post Office scandal musical.

I’ve written up my experience of doing that here.

Go and see it if you can.

Sir Humphrey shows a clear pair of heels

Since my last newsletter I’ve also written up the evidence of former top civil servant Sir Alex Chisholm KCB in a piece called:

Chisholm: helping Paula Vennells fail upwards

In the last newsletter I failed to give you the correct link to my piece on former Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake’s evidence to the Inquiry. It is called:

Hollinrake’s legacy: Postmasters dying without full redress

After I linked to the latter piece on twitter, Kevin Hollinrake (who is also a secret emailer – hello Kevin) got in touch to tell me he was “surprised” I was only telling “half a story”.

I have added his perspective it to the blog post.

Catching up

I am now a little behind on Inquiry matters. I ran half an eye over civil servants Sarah Munby and Lorna Gratton’s evidence, but missed Carl Cresswell (a long-serving Business department civil servant) Gareth Thomas (the current Post Office minister) and Charles Donald (UKGI).

Gratton had some interesting things to say in her evidence about Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) being too “commercial” in their approach to compensation negotiations.

More worrying, if Gratton is to be believed, when they were asked if they could do it in a less aggressive way HSF told the government to back off and leave it to the experts. I paraphrase, and I’m sure if I’ve got this completely wrong HSF (who also number among the secret emailers) will get in touch, but they do appear to have acted like a cancer in the compensation process.

Actual Quotes

I’ve dug out the Gratton quotes in case anyone thinks I’m being unfair. This is what the UKGI/Post Office board director said:

“I don’t think Herbert Smith spending time disputing a small amount of money is a good use of taxpayers’ money but, much more importantly, that is a bad experience for claimants and, in the scheme of things, it’s just not a big deal, and I think they should have been taking a less kind of commercial approach to it, and much more of a sort of benefit of the doubt, yes, within the parameters set out within the scheme, but I just didn’t think arguing oversmall amounts of money is the right approach to take to people who have suffered terrible harms at the hands of the Post Office.”

On the response from Herbert Smith when the government tried to tell them to back off a bit, Gratton told the Inquiry:

“My impression was they’d been very involved in the development of the [HSS] scheme and there was a little bit of a “This I just how commercial negotiation is done, you don’t understand” sort of approach.“

To be fair to HSF, they’re just doing what they do. It’s the old face-eating leopard thing. If you bring a face-eating leopard into work, you can hardly start complaining when the leopard runs amok and starts eating faces.

That reminds me. I went to see Nick Cave at the O2 last night. Amid the songs of love, loss, communion and joy, there was a(n excellent) song called Elephant Gun, which is about unaccountable power.

“I’ll shoot you all for free If you evеr think about coming ’round here I’ll shoot you in the f****** facе”

… roared Mr Cave to 20,000 people.

“I’m a Botticelli Venus, with a penis…Riding an enormous scalloped fan I’m a sea foam woman rising from the spray And I’m coming to do you harm…”

It was quite a show.

Have a great weekend

Nick