Horizon - The Fujitsu/Post Office Scandal

I expect the sub postmasters/mistresses whose lives she ruined had to suffer much worse media exposure than she's had to contend with. She deserves everything she gets.

I started out on this not knowing whether she was incompetent or the organisation was incompetent or both; she was lied to by others in the organisation (to cover their a*****s) or knew all the pertinent facts; that she was naive and got pulled along by bad advise (advise probably driven by institutional culture) or others were bowing to her stated strategic direction; or she was too far above things as CEO to really have a grasp (despite the rather obvious point that if your org is involved in a high profile and hugely expensive case, or you are personally going in front of an HoC SC, you really ought to be making sure you are on top of things as the CEO). 

I too have struggled to make her out, but as her evidence has gone on I've been coming to the conclusion that she is indeed pretty intelligent, that she could not have been so naive, she was a major force behind the behaviour of the PO (even if she inherited a bad situation) has appalling ethics and morals, and that she is now at the inquiry quite frequently lying through her teeth and trying to persuade people that black is in fact white.

I think Jason Beer - and his team - have done a pretty fine job in following the trail of the evidence to join up the dots and reveal a particular underlying narrative and then walk PV right into a corner that whatever insincere garbage is coming out of her mouth doesn't stack up. There have been some pretty telling moments. How many times has she had to say that in some communication or other she used language which didn't convey what she meant ? And that in fact she really did mean something completely different ? One or two you might forgive, but the pieces weave themselves into a tapestry which depicts a pretty condemning picture. IMHO.

One example is the note regarding Susan Crichton, with PV writing that (and I'm doing from memory) that "she put her obligations to her legal professional conduct standards above the needs of the business". Said as a negative F*S. The way she tried to explain that away was so utterly lacking in any credibility that she had to be lying through her teeth, or another part of her anatomy. If she really meant that she had two major roles - one the corporate legal job and the other the business project (oversight of SS?) - and she had neglected one in favour of the other, then it would have read along lines of "she spent too much time on her legal role to the detriment of her business function role". Not that she put her professional standards adherence above the business needs. Her attempted "explanation" was mind blowing, and by way of that quite illuminating. IMHO

The bit I'm still really struggling with though is: motivation. Did she just get too far into a particular "reality" that she couldn't back out of it and had to continually dig deeper ?  Regardless, it shows her ethics to be appalling. Does she have a mindset of they are just 'little people, unimportant' compared to the 'public institution'. We are back to morals again. 

and in many cases had to live with the opprobrium of their local communities. As well as having been made bankrupt. And effectively coerced into admissions of guilt for something they had not wittingly done - "false accounting" - or had in effect been forced into by the awful circumstances they found themselves in. 

A bit of a media scrum at a national public enquiry is the least of her worries. BTW, I did go back and watch and I  didn't think it was that bad. She was accompanied by police officers and didn't have to force her way through. But perhaps that was day 2 and day 1 was different. 

I am puzzled. I know the police and CPS are not directly responsible for these wrongful convictions. But why none of them poke POL about this?

Is it because POL is owned by the government and no one care to look into the mystery?

Do they have a proactive approach or more like “press a button and getting a ticket to be seen approach?”

Are you saying there’s no independent body has the power to poke an entity like POL when something doesn’t smell right when traces of wrongdoing can’t be found without prying them?

I suppose the closest thing is the Beeb’s Panorama program. Isn’t odd is not on their radar in the past?