Alice Perkins was the £100,000-a-year chairman of the Post Office from 2011 until 2015 and the second wife of Jack Straw, the former Labour home secretary.
Problems with Horizon began long before Ms Perkins joined the Post Office but she took up her role as evidence was emerging that sub-postmasters were being wrongly prosecuted.
As chairman she was able to ask questions of the board as the scandal grew but her interests appeared to be on other issues.
Alongside Ms Vennells, Ms Perkins had a focus on making management more diverse with scorecards for gender, ethnicity and disability mix, and senior staff were trained to manage their unconscious bias when hiring.
A job for one of the inner, establishment, circle, implementing DEI instead of not jailing innocents.
What a glorious parable for our times.
Alongside Ms Vennells, Ms Perkins had a focus on making management more diverse with scorecards for gender, ethnicity and disability mix, and senior staff were trained to manage their unconscious bias when hiring.
Has there ever been an establishment more worthless than these people?
Have you seen the batty old CofE shortlisted Vennells for Bishop of London in 2017?
Almost a pity they didn’t appoint her; it would have made the Establishment stitch-up complete.
Have you seen the batty old CofE shortlisted Vennells for Bishop of London in 2017?
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Fuckface.
Good old Diversity Inclusion Equity. DIE bastards…
The PO scandal is basically an expose of how UK society works (or rather doesn’t) in the 21st century. There’s some lowly programmers somewhere (probably India) who were paid a pittance to code this the Horizon software. Above that is an inverted pyramid of management with increasingly high pay, none of whom have a clue what the grunts at the bottom have done, or are doing. All of whom have a vested interest in keeping the pyramid balanced on its tip, rather than worrying about what effects they are having in the wider world, and are incapable anyway of understanding the thing they are nominally in charge of. Everyone needs to take ‘advice’ from somewhere lower down the pyramid, until they reach Ajay in Bangalore who doesn’t give a f*ck anyway because he’s only a contractor, in a different country, and is hardly going to say what he’s done is a pile of sh*t.
You can translate the above scenario into just about every corporate and government scandal in the UK over the last 20+ years.
Its high time that the concept of time served apprenticeships were reintroduced, with all management selected from those who started on the shop floor like everyone else, so that those at the top know how stuff at the bottom really works. Its the parachuting in of a university ‘educated’ management class that has caused this. 90% of university places should be abolished, and be replaced by on the job training, so that those who end up in charge of things know how they really work.
Arent we told from Ritchie and Co that nationalising things means political accountability, focus on the common good etc., rather than senior management doing whatever they want for their own agendas?
Jim. There’s not a word of that I’d disagree with apart from your future for the universities. I find the excellent Mr Pot an inspiration there. Could you grow rice up your way.
Jim, your proposal requires the kind of central control that Captain Potato and BiS’s hero Mr Pot would favour. A simpler solution would be to adopt the G&S solution of making the punishment fit the crime so that managers (a category which in the public sector embraces civil servants and politicians) faced imprisonment and compensation claims.
You have previously inveighed against pre-pack arrangements: this would be a sensible extension to the concept of liability.
The amount of rain we’ve had recently would certainly suggest that rice is the UK’s crop of the future!
Tho I think we can adapt Mr Pot’s methods to suit the UK’s more natural cropping – there’s plenty of work in the veg fields of the south west and eastern counties, cutting cabbages, picking potatoes etc etc. Hard work out in all winds and weathers, that should concentrate the mind of a university professor of political economy, or a sociology graduate.
The PO scandal is basically an expose of how UK society works (or rather doesn’t) in the 21st century
Yarp
Useless, stupid women collecting large sums of money for running previously functional organisations into the ground.
“Archbishops” who don’t believe in God.
An unelected Indian popinjay filling his pockets with cash as he and his associates turn our country into a third world shithole where nothing works and you have to be a higher rate taxpayer to afford central heating.
Every arsehole, as far as the eye can see, is adorned with a gong from King T, who is himself yet another gurning oxygen thief and seedcorn eater.
It’s shite being British, Tommy. Wat Tyler did nothing wrong (except lose).
“Useless, stupid women collecting large sums of money for running previously functional organisations into the ground.”
Lets not be overly sexist here, there were plenty of useless stupid men doing exactly the same thing [cough] Tim Parker[cough]
Jim – I mean women of both sexes tho.
Not sure if that’s sexist or not, when my wife comes out of the kitchen I’ll ask her.
A simpler solution would be to adopt the G&S solution of making the punishment fit the crime so that managers (a category which in the public sector embraces civil servants and politicians) faced imprisonment and compensation claims.
You have previously inveighed against pre-pack arrangements: this would be a sensible extension to the concept of liability.
Funnily enough I’ve just been reading the SNPs latest madness on transgender on Mick Hartley’s blog and thought its about time we brought in something similar. They want to be able to jail parents for up to 7 years and/or issue unlimited fines if they try to prevent their children getting reassignment treatment.
Whenever there’s a historical scandal, something that’s gone on for years and everybody knows but not enough is done to fix it in a timely manner, like this post office thing or the infected blood problem I always wonder ‘what’s happening now which will be unfixed for twenty years?’
Gender reassignment is obviously such a case. Thousands of victims, some suicides, officialdom is still allowing/endorsing it.
The Online Safety bill hasn’t happened yet in terms of innocent victims but it surely will, except nobody will be able to oppose it because of the Online Safety Act.
Any more?
What an excellent point. What is it they’re fucking up right now?
BiND – They want to be able to jail parents for up to 7 years and/or issue unlimited fines if they try to prevent their children getting reassignment treatment.
I hate being proved right, but this is exactly what Treeza May and the rest of the One Nation Tories / PIE want, and indeed is the entire purpose of the “conversion therapy” ban.
Hmm … allow evil people to brainwash my daughter and cut off her breasts, or… hammers?
What a tricky decision. Find out on this week’s episode of Moral Maze, live from Steve’s compost pile.
By the way, nobody should fear prison. Jail is nothing. Family is everything.
I think the PO scandal has the potential to really change things. It probably won’t, but there is a slim chance. Were there to be a party at the next election standing in every seat that promised one thing only – to prosecute every single person responsible for the Horizon fiasco, from top to bottom, burn their houses down and salt the land, that party would sweep into power. The public are fed up with the ever revolving establishment carousel of failure and rewards for failure, and this whole scandal could crystallise that sense of inchoate rage that I think is currently suppressed throughout society.
Be nice to think so, Jim. But I can’t imaging that sort of sentiment being promulgated through the media. The media is just as much a part of the revolving establishment. Where would it end!?!?
the potential to really change things.
a party at the next election standing in every seat that promised one thing only – to prosecute every single person responsible for the Horizon fiasco, from top to bottom, burn their houses down and salt the land, that party would sweep into power
sense of inchoate rage … throughout society.
‘fraid not, Jim. For most people it’s just a drama on the tellybox.
Fujitsu is crap everywhere
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-one-is-talking-about-fujitsu-in-japan/
what’s happening now which will be unfixed for twenty years?
The NHS is still killing babies – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-67083689
“The media is just as much a part of the revolving establishment. Where would it end!?!?”
True, but for once the media are not complicit in this one. So they don’t have a vested interest in keeping schtum. They can go after the guilty to their hearts content, safe in the knowledge the chain of guilt is not going to lead to them. If this thing got big there’s no need for the MSM to cover it up. As you often say, follow the self interest. The MSM can make out big time on a story like this, and will suffer no consequences. As such I can see them piling in.
Not sure about that, Jim. This story has had legs for at least a decade. So why’s it only now reached prominence? It’s not as if it hasn’t been aired before. Numerous times in various quarters. Then sunk below the attention level because there’s been no appetite to follow it. You reckon that’s purely accidental?
I have deep suspicions about the media & its complicity in all manner of things. The people who control the media aren’t just unbiased observers. They’re as much a part of the “establishment” as any other part. Often the same bloody people or their friends or relatives.
Oh dear…
In 2021 Fujitsu Network Communications won the Optica Diversity & Inclusion Advocacy Recognition for “their investment in programs and initiatives celebrating and advancing Black, LGBTQ+ and women employees in pursuit of greater inclusion and equality within their company and the wider community.”
Never mind the competence, feel the diversity.
The mainstream media has staunchly ignored or swept this under the carpet for a long time, I’m guessing there are some media people who would rather not explain why that is the case.
“This story has had legs for at least a decade. So why’s it only now reached prominence? It’s not as if it hasn’t been aired before. Numerous times in various quarters. Then sunk below the attention level because there’s been no appetite to follow it. You reckon that’s purely accidental?”
I’m a firm believer in the ‘tipping point’ theory of human activity. Certain behaviours can go on in a certain way for many years, and then suddenly flip 180 degrees for no apparent reason. Behind the scenes there’s a steady drip drip of pressure to change, but nothing happens on the surface for ages, then suddenly the tectonic plates shift and once that change becomes obvious everybody and their dog piles into the new paradigm. Even though the whole scenario was entirely predictable from the outset everyone sits tight until forced to move. Often its just some random event that apparently ’causes’ the flip, like the ITV program in this case.
To be honest we on the Right should be trying to use this (in the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ manner) to get some sort of law passed that in some way levels the playing field between the State & Big Business and the private individual. In the same way the Equality act and Climate Change act were passed and have f*cked everyone over ever since, we need to try and get something on the statute books on the back of this scandal that will f*ck over Big Government and Big Business for decades to come. What that would be I’ll leave to the mega brains, but the opportunity seems to be presenting itself, and it should be grabbed with both hands.
I’ve got a feeling Jim’s sort of theory that you can’t explain tipping points until they come along and suck you under has legs.
The NHS being schit for cancer care, GPs not being paid by customers, shortages of GPs, 67% income tax marginal rates, pensions triple lock are all stupid but likely to be with us for decades more. Likewise planning taking ages.
Yet in 2018 the environment was getting steadily better, petrol taxes higher than now, a GW or 2 of renewables being added to the grid each year, and then it all kicked off for no reason with a self-confessed scandinavian truant and XR saying governments weren’t doing anything and blocking roads and trains.
Or that nonsense banning foreign languages from tv in Ukraine in mid 2021, we got cheap gas from Russia at the time, which proximately led to that half hearted invasion of Feb 2022. You just can’t tell.
Whatever the tipping points are they have to be personal, dramatic and relateable – spreadsheets showing Slovenes have better chances of beating cancer than Brits doesn’t cut it. Maybe a drama on health emigration is needed.
While they’re doing this proposed Act of Oblivion we should ask them also to exonerate all those who got fined for breaking lockdown guidance; and the plods who so zealously enforced measures that were never even debated in Parliament should have their collars felt.
What that would be I’ll leave to the mega brains
That’s a disappointment.
“What an excellent point. What is it they’re fucking up right now?”
In the last-but-one Kurt Schlicter, there is a large underground movement of “The Mutilated” who are levying retribution upon the surgeons and social workers wot cut they’re bits off.
In the usual Kurt Schlicter style, this is very funny, But this bit hurts.
So yes, this is No1. tomorrow’s scandal. After the Vax of course. Oh, and Net Zero “Let’s incinerate your family” EVs and “let your children freeze to death in the winter anticyclones” heat pumps scandal.
Meantime, do you know your mobile phone will stop being able to call the UK (including any other UK mobile) Real Soon Now?
You just cannot satirise this lot. They really are this stupid. I know, I have to deal with them.
Bother
“their”, not “they’re”
And only stop calling UK when roaming, of course.
Edit facilty needed.
“What is it they’re fucking up right now?”
Trans
Net zero
Energy supply
Mass immigration
Covid vaccine
Health service
Welfare
National debt
Pandemic treaty
But you knew that.
All are lunacy which will at some stage lead to widely predicted disasters, by which time the perpetrators fervently hope to be long gone.
Tim: “What an excellent point. What is it they’re fucking up right now?”
11,000 avoidable deaths per year in the NHS. It was on an ITV documentary a few months ago. Shame they did it as a 1-hour documentary. They should have made it into a 4-hour human interest drama.
I’ve been idly wondering if the death of Mrs Nerd could be made into a drama. That led to thoughts of who would play me… sadly the only actor I’ve been mistaken for is Johnny Vegas.
An actor to play my MP would be easy to find, because it would be a non-speaking part. Since I contacted him two months ago, his minion has allocated a case reference number, and that is all that has been done.
That’s fitting, somehow, because my MP used to work in insurance.
Forgot to mention:
Preferential treatment of minorities
Mass university education
Multiculturalism
Some of these and the earlier list are old favourites but their baleful results have yet to fully manifest themselves.
Meantime, do you know your mobile phone will stop being able to call the UK (including any other UK mobile) Real Soon Now?
I haven’t seen anything about that and can’t find anything with a quick search?
Why would they stop you calling UK?
Things have changed since we left the EU and we’ll continue to diverge, but I can’t see why this would be in anyone’s interest. I can see some operators going back to the old system when calling back to UK was an international call but calling an in country number was local charges, based on the roaming partner and that will get messy.
Tim the C
Do you mean the 3G network being closed diwn ?
2G for calls will still be around and “modern” phones are 4G capable.
Of course 5G will activate the vaccine nanobots, so I’f avoid that.
@BiND
Not Brexit, spam calls with fake CLI.
Appears the Great British Publick is so gullible they will believe anything they are told over the phone, when they get called by their friendly Nigerian General.
So block all these calls, regardless of consequences.
There is a proposed ‘fix’: to test whether the purported caller is actually roaming. This means that any spammer anywhere in the world can test if their target is roaming just by spoofing a call with their number. If it goes through, excellent, go burgle their empty house.
Thanks, TtC, I’ll do a search.
I think this be it:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/cli-authentication
@philip
The lockdown amnesty would be a Good Thing but who is going to do it? Sunak (and Johnson) would benefit from it which politically blocks the Tories from doing it. The Covid Inquiry seems to be steering away from issues about the proportionality of the response, despite some earlier hopes – had it looked in that direction and made an amnesty recommendation, perhaps a future non-Tory (or at least non-Sunak and non-Johnson) government might have picked up on it, but that doesn’t seem likely now. It’s not the kind of thing Labour under Starmer seem likely to go for either, and while in theory it’s one of those basic issues of freedom and liberalism that ought to be attractive to the Lib Dems as a minority campaigning issue, they all seem too wet and statist these days. So I’m not optimistic.
Obviously the upper echelons misheard what was being reported to them, and thought that the “two faced commit” was how they should deal with the situation.
It’s stories such as this that make me wonder whatever happened to Mr Ecks with his, ahem, “hands on” approach to resolving problems.