Tell Me Lies Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Little Lies was released in 1987 by Fleetwood Mac and the track was allegedly about Christine McVie’s failed relationship with her first husband, Mick Fleetwood, but I can hear some of you saying; what has this track got to do with this specific article? Well I would venture to answer this question with the following answer; an awful lot.? So please read on.

It’s an open secret that Governments of all colours have always been economical with the truth and you really don’t need to look very hard for the evidence.? However, I will throw one lie into the pond; BOJO’s promises on BREXIT when many of us knew he was only using this platform to get elected as Prime Minister. The case for BREXIT was always wafer thin and there was no surprise when BOJO had written in his top inside pockets two speeches, one for winning and one for losing.? ?Just tell the populous what they want to hear rather than what they really need to know.? Sometimes the truth will hurt and it’s better to spin some ideas that may never come to fruition.? However the majority of the populous can be very gullible, thus affording the liar Hero Status at least in the short term, but Hero Status often comes with a heavy price and be sure your sins will always find you out, especially in the current environment.? Historically, the ability to be economical with the truth and avoid any form of scrutiny was of course that much easier, precisely because technology, as we know it today, just didn’t really exist until the new Millennium.

I will briefly digress before I get to the heart of the problem because I vividly remember participating in a debate at my Grammar School when I was a mere 16 years old and too young to even vote in a General Election.? Politics was however always healthily debated at my school and there was one motion that I have never ever forgotten and will, indeed, never forget.? This motion, over fifty five years ago, was as follows; ‘Dishonesty Is Essential For A Successful Politician’.? Ever since then and especially when I see a Public Servant interviewed, this motion is always prominent at the back of my mind.

It is a given that being economical with the truth has always been fundamental to strong leadership especially in the domain of Government and Public Service.? Anyone who thinks otherwise is at best naive and at worst stupid.? There is of course a thin line between telling lies and being economical with the truth but it has always existed and sometimes ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ has always been the covert message from Government to the populous.? However, what we are now seeing unfold in front of very eyes and with the assistance of Media Technology is an escalation of lies and lies on a scale that has never before been exposed before.? I am of course making reference to the Post Office Scandal where it is now abundantly clear that key personnel? within this organisation allegedly lied on an unprecedented scale.?

You have to question why this particular case has taken an extra-ordinary long time for the lies to be exposed and for the truth to finally surface.? Well the answer has to be that the Post Office is’ A Closed Shop’ that has been run from the top down by An Establishment of Fear with the leading personnel operating as both judge and jury without any recourse to their actions. ?One could argue that it is as close to a Communist State as you could get and it reminds me of the East German Government prior to Unification.? This scandal is so horrendous that it makes the film ‘Scandal’ look like a Comedy of Errors and all that Lord Profumo did in this scandal, as the Minister for War, was to have an extramarital affair with a nineteen year old model, Christine Keeler but an alleged Prostitute.? An inquiry always follows these events and the inquiry into The Profumo Affair, led by Lord Denning was deemed to be both superficial and unsatisfactory.? Perhaps the inquiry into the Post Office Scandal will be anything but superficial and will expose many Human Wood Lice, as this scandal has all the makings of A Grand Cover Up.? Some heads in high places therefore need to roll.? Do unto them what they have covertly done unto others aka their innocent colleagues in the Sub Post Offices.

Let’s turn up the heat a little and add some flesh to the bones splattered of course with usual plethora of ‘allegedly’ comments.? Putting on my Sound of Music hat, we need to start at the very beginning, which is a very good place to start in the late 1990’s when Tony Blair was Prime Minister and when Harriet Harman allegedly told the Prime Minister that the Horizon Project was useless.? However this was more than a quarter of a century ago and I doubt anything, not even his alleged lies over Iraq, will ever stick to Teflon Tony or as the Economist Magazine made reference on more than one occasion, Mr BLIAR.

Paula Vennells, as the CEO of the Post Office is a significant starting point.? She was at the Post Office for 12 years and was CEO for seven years before stepping down in 2019. This highly thought of individual has perhaps, allegedly and covertly, been telling sweet little lies to her broader church, albeit she may prefer any comments being classified perhaps as economical with the truth.? The Broader Church of course makes reference to her nomination as a potential Woman of the Cloth for that Christian Post, London’s Bishop, not a position that you would have thought was the domain for an alleged liar. She has since withdrawn herself, unsurprisingly, from this position of trust.? Or perhaps this highly paid CEO was just a mere figurehead on a huge salary, bonus and pension benefits - there could of course both allegedly and arguably be plenty of other examples in the Public Sector - and that she was simply allowed to pursue a position of power on a huge salary funded by the taxpayer but with the option of some abdication for her responsibilities, which then of course opens up a can of worms because if she didn’t know what was happening under her stewardship, there must have been others around her and beneath her who did know what was actually going on.?

I would be amazed if this appalling state of affairs, as it unfolds, will just focus on the Post Office.? As more stones are turned over, further examples of highly paid and allegedly fibbing human woodlice could be exposed. Taking my lead from that amazing drama, The House of Cards, I couldn’t possibly comment on other Public Sector organisations that may also need to be investigated.? I will therefore leave it to my regular readers to exercise their own grey matter as to where they think these other untapped land-mines may be lurking.? However, the inquiry could indeed extend beyond Public Sector employees at the Post Office and into Accountancy and perhaps Civil Servants who were handling lucrative Private Finance Contracts.

I raise the issue of Accounting because if there were irregularities in the Post Office’s Accounts and there is an alleged underpayment of income tax, wouldn’t these irregularities have been picked up by the Auditors.? I will leave it to the Inquiry as to how contracts have been allocated.? However I will conclude with the following comments.? If these events occurred in the Private Sector, shareholders of PLC’s would pay the price on the value of their shares but they would also demand changes of stewardship and heads would roll.? Public Sector companies like the Post Office are however fundamentally different as they are owned by the Populous with the Government and the Civil Service acting as our agents or supposed to be acting as our agents.? In all seriousness, they are all paid by us and accountable to us, especially as we end up paying the bill for all of the errors, whether they are innocent or libellous ones.? The Populous must therefore demand straight answers and criminal action if there has been impropriety.? I am also mindful to ask why Public Servants ever deserve any bonus for just doing the day job.? They are Public Servants funded by the taxpayer and any bonus if paid has to be justified and also transparent, two qualities that the Post Office appears to have been sadly lacking in spades.

I expect there will be a few employees at the Post Office, current and retired, who are quaking in their boots and justifiably so. Perhaps they will suffer the same treatment that was handed out to their Sub Post Masters.? I for one will not be crying for them because, whether they were directly responsible or not, they have all benefited substantially from other peoples misfortunes and from a total miscarriage of justice.? Let the Inquiry begin.? No more ‘Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies’ but let’s uncover all of the ‘Big Porky Pies’ and if the Post Office is indeed liable for ￡100m of underpaid tax, than let this sum be taken from the assets of the named guilty parities and not from the tax payers who are merely the innocent owners of these Criminals.

I am clearly not alone when I say this whole charade makes my blood boil. ?It will make a great Film but a Film that must be played by Actors and not by the Guilty Employees with the benefits given to those who deserve it and definitely not for those asshole architects of the crime.

This whole episode must also bring under the microscope the future of ex Prime Ministers Resignation Honours Lists where many gongs that have been presented cannot, in my opinion, be justified. The Honours System is, in its basic format, both biased and no longer fit for purpose.