Agreed, how do people as thick as this get into some of these jobs. There is 2 trains of thought, either she really is that thick, or she's playing a game to mitigate her involvement.
I think it's quite possibly a bit of both, she does seem to be both thick and incompetent but seems to play up the "I can't remember" card very frequently even when the questions aren't reliant on her memory of events.
Her questioning is the first two hours of that youtube clip and I just say down and watched it all as the snippets I'd seen were so ridiculous, I hope she's going to face a perjury charge after seeing some of that!
It concerns one of the subpostmasters (or rather postmistresses) who was initially taken to court and then the case was dropped and the Post Office settled with her, this thick woman was the regional manager. The PM had blamed the horizon software and had made a bunch of calls to the helpline about it, the regional manager suspended then sacked/terminated the contract of the PM.
She's asked about the investigation she did and she's just waffly or playing the memory card. She acts confused several times when presented with the witness statement from the case that she'd signed and submitted to the court along with some call logs... she doesn't know anything about a court case. It's explained to her more than once that this was settled before going to court and that this was the witness statement she submitted but she still acts confused when questioned about it.
One issue where she or someone else at the post office appears to have been dishonest is re: the call logs submitted to the court, there are some call logs where the regional manager has phones the horizon support line on behalf of the postmistress and reported issues with the horizon software. Also, there's a note closing out the support ticket as a known issue!!!!! Like FFS!!!!
Funnily enough, that was omitted despite her signed witness statement claiming to have submitted logs from certain dates - she seemingly feigns confusion when asked about it.
She's also asked about a claim that she told the postmistress to maintain her own set of records because of the issues with Horizon and provided her a book to do so... she again doesn't seem to remember this... then is presented with a letter signed by herself, to the postmistress proving this was the case.
Particularly damning, and where they presumably ought to get her for perjury, is on her witness statement she seems to try and pass off some claim that the postmistress phoned the Horizon support line a bunch of times but for assistance and not to report technical issues. She would have known that this was untrue at the time as she herself phoned to chase up technical issues the postmistress was trying to get resolved! That along with the logs missing from her submission to the court seems incredibly dodgy/dishonest.
She's seemingly not only not bothered to investigate the postmistresses defence re: technical issues that she clearly knew about (at least at the time anyway as she's quite forgetful now) but the seems to have been a clear attempt here to actively cover it up.
The comical part is just how she's treating the whole inquiry, she was sent all of the documents in July along with some questions, her reply/witness statement to the inquiry seemingly doesn't address the questions and when asked about basic stuff like the witness statement she signed and submitted to the court years back (which she was sent a copy of months ago) she's all confused and repeatedly gets in a muddle over what is being referred to etc.
