Boss Paula Vennells obsessively prioritised Post Office’s image over everything… we need proper accountability
Justice now
SHE heard nothing, knew nothing, did nothing. Everything was someone else’s fault.
Believe Paula Vennells’ self-serving, tear-stricken testimony and it is hard to understand just what she DID do all day to justify a Post Office package worth £718,000 a year.
At best she was staggeringly inept. It may be worse.
What is obvious is that the ex-chief executive obsessively prioritised the Post Office’s image over everything.
The jobs, reputations, freedom and lives of innocent staff ended up trampled underfoot.
One thing Vennells admitted did ring true . . . about the “imbalance of power between the institution and the individual”.
That’s a polite description for the Post Office’s sickening and callous contempt towards those it was, obscenely, putting in jail on false charges.
That goes too for the entire British legal system which let the Post Office run wild with its own prosecutions — and all those within it who must surely have detected a bad odour emanating from this strange spate of alleged thefts.
This evidence comes just days after the infected blood inquiry finally exposed a similarly despicable disregard for NHS patients in the 1980s.
And the same impulse among senior figures, then and in the decades since, not to right the wrongs but to cover their backsides.
But while the truth of these giant scandals at state-run enterprises — both unearthed by our free Press — is coming to light at last, we still need proper accountability.
For those responsible not to hide behind some corporate blame but to pay with their own liberty.
Only then will justice be done — and a deterrent be established for others.
Court’s shame
WHAT a day of shame for the International Court of Justice.
Yes, the situation in Rafah is appalling. War is appalling.
Hamas began this one and could end it instantly by surrendering and handing over the hostages.
The ICJ’s perverse decision, which Israel will ignore, would force the IDF to pull out, let the terrorists off the hook and condemn Jewish hostages to die.
It confirms that this court, like other discredited international bodies, is now politicised to the point of uselessness.
Cull the crank
WHAT a golden opportunity for Labour voters in Islington North to finally rid our politics of the toxic crank Corbyn.
A man whose puerile ignorance and revolting fondness for the IRA and other terrorists should have disqualified him from the Commons 40 years ago.
Instead Labour twice backed him for No10. Even now it beggars belief.
Plenty still adore the anti-Semite and may vote for him as an independent.
But let’s hope decency prevails.