Thank you for your writings on this.I watch the live streaming of this Inquiry, and while letting stuff go over my head to keep up with it, there’s no way not to notice the visceral feelings that arise during some answers so it was a joy to read that you died a bit when Foat gave his CV rather than say if he thought he was up to the job of GC. To me it felt like my blood was pretending not to remember its way round my body. I’m grateful to you for enriching my experience of this Inquiry with your report and analysis.
I have been an in-house litigator & investigator for many years. I have plenty to say on Foat's baffling evidence but will do so tomorrow as it is now v late.
It seems to me, this whole thing is founded on the misconception that computer evidence is inherently reliable. Out of that coms so much.
What strikes me as dangerously reckless is that as far as I can see and hear from the evidence, none of them checked anything, or did a bit of basic investigtion in respect of confirming the evidence they were given. Did any of them read the Fraser judgement I wonder? That failure to check is, in my view, intellectually flawed.
Given their fee rates/salaries, that seems to me to be little more than blagging. Not to mention idle.
For me, what you describe is dancing on pin heads, but not in the least bit angelic.
There has to be an element of responsibility for not confirming the quality of evidence because that brings about the kind of flawed opinion that is another of the recurring themes in this sorry exercise. And given the legal love afair with LLM's, more of this kind of thing to come in due course.
There's something staring us in the face that is so big that hardly anyone has commented on it, and that is that POL seems to be run entirely by lawyers . Even very senior general managers seek legal approval before they go to the bathroom. The lawyers have destroyed the company but general managers just stood by and let them. No general manager stepped in and said " thanks for your advice , lawyers, but in the commercial and reputational interests of the company I am instructing you to stop" That's the real governance issue
I would not go quite that far, but I see what you mean. The handling of things from 2013 to 2020 in particular and in significant ways beyond that is how it looks.
I believe that dodging away from dealing with CoI is more prevalent than not. Dealing with CoI always carries criticism of someone else: do you not see this, why have you not brought this up yourself, you have to stand aside etc. Far easier is a route that avoids the confrontation. Is this passive aggressive or just cowardice mixed with pretence? As soon as an expert is recruited to give a view then air cover is being provided to the people who should be dealing with CoI. In the case you describe Richard it is clearly the NEDs pretending away the problem by letting the GC layer on layers of lawyers ... thought provoking blog thank you ... JAS.
Richard
Thank you for your writings on this.I watch the live streaming of this Inquiry, and while letting stuff go over my head to keep up with it, there’s no way not to notice the visceral feelings that arise during some answers so it was a joy to read that you died a bit when Foat gave his CV rather than say if he thought he was up to the job of GC. To me it felt like my blood was pretending not to remember its way round my body. I’m grateful to you for enriching my experience of this Inquiry with your report and analysis.
Richard,
I have been an in-house litigator & investigator for many years. I have plenty to say on Foat's baffling evidence but will do so tomorrow as it is now v late.
It seems to me, this whole thing is founded on the misconception that computer evidence is inherently reliable. Out of that coms so much.
What strikes me as dangerously reckless is that as far as I can see and hear from the evidence, none of them checked anything, or did a bit of basic investigtion in respect of confirming the evidence they were given. Did any of them read the Fraser judgement I wonder? That failure to check is, in my view, intellectually flawed.
Given their fee rates/salaries, that seems to me to be little more than blagging. Not to mention idle.
For me, what you describe is dancing on pin heads, but not in the least bit angelic.
There has to be an element of responsibility for not confirming the quality of evidence because that brings about the kind of flawed opinion that is another of the recurring themes in this sorry exercise. And given the legal love afair with LLM's, more of this kind of thing to come in due course.
No apologies for banging on.
There's something staring us in the face that is so big that hardly anyone has commented on it, and that is that POL seems to be run entirely by lawyers . Even very senior general managers seek legal approval before they go to the bathroom. The lawyers have destroyed the company but general managers just stood by and let them. No general manager stepped in and said " thanks for your advice , lawyers, but in the commercial and reputational interests of the company I am instructing you to stop" That's the real governance issue
I would not go quite that far, but I see what you mean. The handling of things from 2013 to 2020 in particular and in significant ways beyond that is how it looks.
I believe that dodging away from dealing with CoI is more prevalent than not. Dealing with CoI always carries criticism of someone else: do you not see this, why have you not brought this up yourself, you have to stand aside etc. Far easier is a route that avoids the confrontation. Is this passive aggressive or just cowardice mixed with pretence? As soon as an expert is recruited to give a view then air cover is being provided to the people who should be dealing with CoI. In the case you describe Richard it is clearly the NEDs pretending away the problem by letting the GC layer on layers of lawyers ... thought provoking blog thank you ... JAS.