Post Office Scandal: a corporate governance disaster pt 7583

Captains of Industrial Hindsight

Mark Russell: “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learning how…”

Morning

It was a bit of a grind yesterday, what with all the live-tweeting and article-writing. I came out the other end at around 10.40pm with not one, but two blog posts about yesterday’s witnesses.

The first “Down ShEx – UKGI on heat (maps) and relish” is a combination of several nearly good ideas in one title and a write-up of ShEx/UKGI CEO Mark Russell’s evidence to the Inquiry.

The second: “Robert Swannell – Culture, Curiosity and Risk” is a more sober headline and no less depressing write-up of former ShEx/UKGI Chair Robert Swannell’s evidence to the Inquiry.

You can have all the heat maps and risk registers you want, but if you fail to spot the big Kahuna, either your systems are not up to the job or you aren’t.

As I said at the end of Down ShEx – the organisation these people represented are in charge of overseeing risk at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the Atomic Weapons establishment and Sizewell C. Lucky us.

Computer Weekly has also written up yesterday’s evidence, going with “Government left monitoring of Post Office to ‘luck’“

Today at the Inquiry

We’re going to spend the morning hearing from a very important witness – Tom Cooper, Post Office board member and UK representative throughout the Group Litigation.

I met Cooper five years ago when I was trying to get to the bottom of the government’s relationship with the Post Office. The government was – at that stage – still lying through its teeth about the level of control and influence it was exerting over the Post Office (something finally blown apart first by Colin, one of the whistleblowers in my book, and later by the Inquiry).

Cooper also has the dubious privilege of being the subject matter in one of the worst sentences ever constructed, it was written by Paula Vennells (or, more likely, a brain-dead lawyer) in her 2020 letter to the BEIS Select Committee. More here.

My plan is to sit in on Cooper’s evidence this morning and then go away and write it up before the England v Holland Euros semi-final. This afternoon’s witness is another ShEx/UKGI witness, Patrick O’Sullivan. I will write his evidence up if it merits it tomorrow.

Have a great day and thanks for your continued support.

Nick

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