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Post Office Inquiry: Cold Mess – Vennells’ first day of evidence reviewed

The penny starts to drop

Ms Vennells, crying at the Inquiry yesterday

Morning everyone

Hope you are okay. The Paula Vennells dumpster fire was towed into town (by electric car – watch the media scrum here) yesterday and girl was it bad. It was worse than I thought. She was worse than I thought.

For example, Vennells revealed that for some reason, in 2012, no one on the Post Office board or executive committee seemed to know (or told Vennells) that the Post Office prosecuted its own people.

As historic failures of corporate governance go, that has to be right up there. But that little nugget didn’t even make my top five things we learned from Day 1 of Vennells’ evidence, which you can read here.

I spent the day sitting next to the amazing Marina Hyde who once more showed us all how to do it with her write-up.

There were plenty of Subpostmasters (and/or their partners) in attendance, including Janet Skinner, Lee and Lisa Castleton, Seema and Davinder Misra, Scott Darlington, Jo Hamilton, Chirag Sidhpura, Alison Hall, Richard Walker and Kevin Brown.

Other notables included Patrick Spence and Natasha Bondy (both exec producers of Mr Bates v the Post Office), Richard Moorhead, Richard Brooks (Private Eye), Tom Witherow (The Times), Emma Simpson (BBC), Fiona Parker (Daily Telegraph), Paul Kelso (Sky News) and the legendary legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg. Apologies to those I failed to mention. I had my head in my laptop for most of the day being even more anti-social than I anticipated. This is a stupid job sometimes.

Vennells though…

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Illustration by Ella Barron at The Guardian

I must admit that after my little moan about the way the Inquiry dealt with Lyons, Davies, Bourke and Crowe, Jason Beer restored my faith yesterday. Beer shone through with his precise skewering of Ms Vennells’ logic and decision-making.

I suspect she (and her supporters) will be thinking it didn’t go too badly. That’s precisely the problem. The insufferable bubble of delusional rectitude cannot tell the difference between brilliance and disaster. So long as the proper processes were followed, no one can be to blame.

Other write-ups of Vennells performance can be found below:

Vennells Demolished – Joshua Rozenberg

Post Office Inquiry: Horrible day for former boss Paula Vennells – Paul Kelso, Sky News

Ex-Post Office boss cries as she admits incorrect evidence – BBC

Five things we learnt from Paula Vennells’ appearance at Post Office inquiry – Daily Telegraph (copy cats!)

The Unluckiest Boss in the United Kingdom – Times (via Tom Witherow’s twitter feed)

LogisticsNooze

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You can skip this bit if you like. It’s quite boring. I just wanted to write it.

I am back at the Aldwych Pret, armed with a suitcase. I have to make my way to Camberley tonight to meet up with my folks ahead of my brother’s wedding. I am worried I might not get any copy away this evening, but I think I’m in with a shout after discovering that the audio recorder app (Audio Hijack, nerds) I run across the inquiry live youtube feed on my Mac has a built-in transcription block, which means I can get a full audio transcript of the live feed the moment I stop recording it. This could easily save me an hour scrolling through the Inquiry audio feed, trying to a) find the quote I want and b) transcribe it accurately.

The last couple of days (after coming in on the 0556 train) I have managed to file a blog post and get home on the 8.42pm out of Waterloo. If I can shave these 14 hour days down a bit they might become more sustainable. Finding a place to write is tricky enough. We get kicked out of Aldwych House at 6pm, so the choice is coffee shop or pub. I dislike the former (too clattery) and find the latter can become counter-productive (ahem).

Luckily, I have discovered the South Wing lobby of Somerset House by Waterloo Bridge has comfy chairs, no distractions nor, admittedly, facilities. Nonetheless, it is warm, quiet, free and open till 11pm. I know!

I got chatting to a security guard as I couldn’t quite tell whether or not I was meant to be there, but they seemed quite happy to have me around. I am sharing this in case you ever find yourself in central London needing some convenient, free and rather beautiful office space.

Day Toona

Okay it’s nearly time to head back in. I will write you another newsletter tomorrow morning, but stay silent throughout Vennells’ final day of evidence. I won’t promise to write Day 3 up over the weekend as I have to watch the FA Cup final on telly with my son and then make my way to the Bath Festival to speak alongside Nicki Arch and Rebecca Thomson on Sunday. There are no Inquiry hearings next week so that’s a chance to catch up with things.

Don’t forget you can follow today’s hearing live on youtube here (starts at 9.45am) or you can follow my live-tweets here.

Have a good day

Nick


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