![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/f61afa6a7136b2866028e08f9e9fed81.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tough at the Top<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n by Paul Francis<\/em><\/p>\n Though Paula Vennells has this business brain Horizon was the system of IT Meanwhile postmasters and postmistresses Post Office can afford the top-rate fee Inside Horizon staff know things are wrong. Each victim was assured they were unique For twenty years, these workers\u2019 lives were tossed Tough at the Top by Paul Francis Though Paula Vennells has this business brainshe moonlights as a handmaid of the lord – a vicar with an eagle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":601,"featured_media":16072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[2952,2951],"class_list":["post-16073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2","tag-paula-vennells","tag-post-office"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/601"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
she moonlights as a handmaid of the lord –
a vicar with an eagle eye for gain.
The Post Office is happy to reward
a boss who is prepared to deal out pain
through cutting costs \u2013 her terrible swift sword
keeps slicing at the staff, cuts hard and deep.
Is that God\u2019s work? The angels watch and weep.<\/p>\n
which found discrepancies in the accounts.
To Vennells it was all too plain to see:
the staff must be embezzling huge amounts.
She will ensure these crooks do not run free.
Directors love her, watch those profits bounce.
She gets a CBE for what she did
and trousers up a cool five million quid.<\/p>\n
are losing friends and family, go to jail.
They try explaining these injustices
but no-one\u2019s seen a glitch on quite this scale.
They don\u2019t do dialogue, modern businesses.
How could an IT system simply fail?
The staff morale is at an all-time low
but who cares? Dividends are good to go.<\/p>\n
for barristers. They play it rough.
A mother doesn\u2019t want her child to see
the handcuffs, stops them visiting. That\u2019s tough.
Only the postmasters, it\u2019s claimed, can see
this data, so their guilt is clear enough.
A huge amount\u2019s been spent to back this lie
and only one reporter\u2019s asking why.<\/p>\n
A whistle-blower says techies can adjust
the data \u2013 so it doesn\u2019t just belong
to postmasters. Management say they\u2019ll trust
an audit team, but sing a different song
when asked for files. You can\u2019t see them for dust.
Vennells\u2019 fa\u00e7ade\u2019s intact, but underneath
the record shows she\u2019s lying through her teeth.<\/p>\n
but there were hundreds. It\u2019s a can of worms.
Key evidence went missing. Hide and seek.
Turns out that this most obdurate of firms
though warned by lawyers that their case was weak
still fought it out in unrelenting terms:
\u201cKeep driving up the costs. We shoot to kill.
They need to know they can\u2019t afford the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
into a nightmare where they had no say –
homes vanished, dreams demolished, futures lost.
Ninety convictions have been wiped away.
Hundreds of millions it is going to cost
to put this right. Is Vennells going to pay?
No chance. Long gone, she\u2019s smiling, out the door.
Business as usual. Rich pick on the poor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"