[Sticks]

This has been unfair on Paula Vennells who has been hounded to give back this honour. Although she was a CEO, she was still an employee in the public sector, and as such was required to rely on what a contractor in the private sector told here.

Where I work in the public sector we have to use a private company to place adverts for official notices. Sometimes they have told us an incorrect publication day of a local weekly paper, and admitted such when I successfully challenged them. However I have been told by others where I work, its not for me to do that and that company is paid to tell us this information and we should accept without question what they say.(Even when I provide evidence to the contrary)

So an advert is programmed for a certain day, and then it publishes on the wrong day, which is what the private company told us in error, and we have to republish and restart a consultation all over again, at public expense. All that, because we are obliged to accept what a private contractor is telling us.

Scale this up and you have Fujitsu, (who I have had a professional run in with before, but that's another story), who insist that there is nothing wrong with their software so any discrepancies MUST be the result of criminal activity on the part of the postmasters / post mistresses. As a public sector employee Vennells had to take them at their word, as we have to with the private contractor who gives us an incorrect publication day, as they are paid to know these things, not me (which I do, more than the contractor at times and someone there once said I knew more about local papers than they did)

I see this hue an cry at what was once a public servant, but where is the hue and cry over the incompetence and deceit of the private contractor, Fujitsu, who in my experience is more culpable.