Post Office Scandal - George Thomson 

I Don’t think it’s that complicated. He is simply an arrogant controlling bully.

An abhorrant bully. I watched all his evidence to the inquiry and his attitude was shocking

He used the word ‘robust’ more than 20 times. He is a company man that sold his members out.

This guy is a disaster in every sense. Another example of a self serving “union” rep.

Total belligerent failure of a man who now owes his members a refund?

He was an aggressive disgrace.

I cannot get over his stupidity in belligerently stating that there'd been prosecutions under the old system so prosecutions under Horizon were par for the course! He has COMPLETELY missed/ignored/evaded the very point of the enquiry..........is he THAT arrogant or THAT incredibly dumb - I think BOTH?!!

His performance was shameful, but he would never recognise it sadly.

He does not understand his priorities and he failed the SP,s.......his members. Who funded him.....follow the money and his personal remuneration!!

I sat through all of Georges testimony, increasingly open mouthed. His opinion was immovable against hard evidence. For to admit he was wrong would mean the history and achievements of his whole working life would be ruined.

What an embarrassment. As a Scot, I feel compelled to say, "We're no aw like that". He's behaving like the belligerent drunk that everyone tries to avoid if they have the misfortune to bump into him on a night out. He wasn't forced into it, he chose his master and that was the Post Office first and foremost while he betrayed the members who were depending on him. Thank you for another very good and fair analysis.

I have no idea what this guy thought he was responsible for, except drawing a salary ........... Just a disgusting excuse for a human being!

He has individually managed to reduce the membership of every single union in the Country. Well done you self centred know all.

I think you’ll find that George Thomson was looking forward to a managerial position within the Post Office… and still is? He is a fool.

I'm so glad to hear this feedback. George Thomson is so arrogant

He did an excellent job of showing the Inquiry what the sub-postmasters were up against. Look forward to a similar analysis of Gareth Jenkins . . .

In George’s world the Titanic was a fantastic liner it sailed for 2000 miles with no problems.

I have met thousands of this type of person. They are bad for your health.

Imagine paying union dues to that

trust a bully to get into positions of power with a sales pitch but no substance to back it up, they tend to work in teams (gangs) of likeminded weaklings to intimidate and infiltrate, but when faced with challenges to fall flat on their faces! This is not exclusive to the Post Office either, we see this everywhere now.

A disgrace to the trade union movement.

George likes confrontation, he invites confrontation and belligerent is an understatement. He is actually very insecure and fears failure, so his fight response is kicking in even beyond rational decision making.

Please keep going with your analysis of the Post Office Horizon enquiry. I was so angry at George's testimony ... Your analysis helps me understand how someone can be that blind to harsh realities

The thing I miss most amongst the witnesses that I've been able to observe is that not a single one of them comes across as being honest or remorseful, neither in their testimonies nor in any apologies, when they are given. They all seem to be reading from roughly the same script, and the only variations seem to be rooted in their individual personal mannerisms and characteristics.

George is the personification of a 'Company's Man' His loyalty and focus lay squarely with the Post Office and securing his own future! The members he was supposed to represent were secondary to that loyalty and still are. His belligerence was a thing to behold.

George has abandoned his moral compass and thrown so many of his SPM’s under the bus. Their interests were simply ignored by a union which might otherwise have defended them and brought the mess to an earlier and happier conclusion. George was as much an enabler as the very many inadequate dissemblers at senior levels we’ve seen over the course of this enquiry. I wonder whether he’ll ever have a moment of introspection, a realisation of his actual role, not the version currently bouncing round his head?

Brilliant. You analysed the absurdity of this witness. You understood the issues of this man and gave us reason and kindness - which he most certainly didn’t deserve.

Brilliant encapsulation of what has been going on for all those years/decades. Thank you. 👍👏

I did notice that when he got his five minutes to tell us what he claimed he’d been suppressed from saying during his evidence, he only repeated claims he had already made several times. So he hadn’t been suppressed. But these inquiries are not about witnesses “having their say”, it’s about giving evidence, based on their witness statement.

Let’s be honest. Was that determined to protect his funding he completely threw his members under a bus A total disgrace

What Tomson doesn't understand it that it is the outliers that can suffer from errors. The outlying errors are the hardest to solve and having seen GJ's testimony I'm not surprised that they didn't get fixed.

He is delusional and that is so obvious by the way he keeps on trying to justify his decision making referring to issues in the past before the introduction of Horizon.

The best analysis of Thomson’s idiocy I have seen or heard.

This is what happens when there is an untrammelled imbalance of power.

This is the type of union rep required by a corporate state, of which the post office is a part.

He proved himself to be a complete clown, prideful petty and willfully blinkered to what was happening on his watch; I feel bad for anyone who had that man as their representative/protector. He was utterly filleted by one question though, near the end of his testimony along the lines of "Even if it was a very small number of people affected, it ruined the lives of those people. They were your members, why were you not looking out for them?"

He's what used to be called 'A Company Man' , an arm around your shoulder while pissing down your leg.Avoided by all except those that tolerated him to do their bidding.

This is a great breakdown of this terrible, terrible human being. Made me ashamed to be Scottish when I watched it, I was gob smacked while Mr Blake was reading out his witness statement and getting a yes to him confirming what he put was correct. Pride definitely played a big part in his attitude as well as his attitude of always being right. For someone who didn’t know anything about how Horizon worked and that his position was to help the SPM’s its amazing he was so committed to be right. Oh and he just lives the sound of his own voice and a bully. Sitting there , lounging about with his shirt open was frustrating. At the end when he got his chance to talk, people were walking out, everybody should have done that! You deserve my subscription to your channel with this video, as you said at end , life’s about learning to be true to yourself and growing, he is lost and not sure he will ever realise he is.

Thank heavens I never had anyone like this person represent me in any union dealings.He appears to have his priorities reversed!

what a horrible little man, i wonder how much he was paid and the big fat pension he awarded himself ?

Loving your metaphors Dr Duckett. George has his head firmly lodged somewhere the sun doesn't shine and is a classic example of fixed thinking, unable to budge even when the truth is slapping you in the face. It's his arrogance that really angers me. He couldn't care less about the SPs.

Empty barrels make the most noise.

I would have liked to hear his answer to why he didn’t help SPMs who were targeted for prosecution. He admits that Horizon did make mistakes, so surely not all SPMs were guilty. And even the guilty are entitled to a defense. So why did he never do anything to help? George is too stupid to realize when to accept defeat. I suppose it’s harder for him because his job was to help and he didn’t even pretend to. Those who prosecuted SPMs did their jobs badly, but George didn’t even try to do his job.

Thank you for this commentary with analysis.

The amazing, truly amazing thing about this enquiry is every day we are gobsmacked at the arrogance and lack of ability in these people... and every day it is worse, and you think you've seen the worst it can possibly, ever in any sane world be and we have hit the utter bottom...and yet next day it plummets even lower! It's beyond bad, its beyond staggeringly bad... I simply dont think there are superlatives enough left to adequately express the depths these people have plumbed.

Dr Paul, rather than pride I sensed a deep-set anxiety, like a poorly socialised pit bull, and that his reaction under such circumstances is to come out always fighting by adopting "the best defence is offence" attitude. Every answer to even closed questions has to be further qualified and contextuatlised so that he controls the bear pit. I can only imagine working for or seeking assistance from him must have been an absolute nightmare of Ferguson-like hairdryer treaments.

I do not understand how he was not held in contempt of the inquiry but then I'm not in the legal profession.

Well done Paul. Utter contempt for ALL postmasters (whether they were caught up in the Horizon scandal or not) is shown by Mr Thomson, not to mention his contempt for the Inquiry. And, this is the man who was supposed to support postmasters and not protect Post Office plc. You nicely break this down for us. Thank you. A postscript: I loved your 'I'm not a psychologist. . . . Actually, I am'!

Even Nigel would not have this man as a reform candidate .

An excellent overview. Pride is the perfect description of this man's faults and inability to be truthful. He's totally missing the point of the issue, all systems have bugs and need constant updates and fixes, but when they affect individuals at the level they did, these are not just minor or trivial faults with the system, they are of a high severity or critical ones which in this case led to reputational damage, a financial impact on the postmasters, legal implications and most importantly unfortunately caused ill health and death of employee - at this point they were not bugs to be overlooked and the system, and the business processes were not robust in the slightest. It just shows that in a work environment, this kind of character succeeds through a loud, bullish and pig headed attitude, but in an inquiry comes across as rude, untrustworthy, arrogant, incapable and dismissive.

George is maybe not clever enough to look at his own behaviour. And certainly not able to put himself in someone elses position and look at it from another point of view. He was definitely not suitable for the job he held.

How can such disgusting people ever get into positions of power

what a revolting thug he is, but I laughed out loud when when he called Mr Stein out for calling him aggressive

A fair & reasoned assessment of how easy it is for people of a certain type, to create & sustain an organisational narrative that is simply wrong, but outwardly which allows them to rationalise their dubious moral position. A lesson that the inquiry needs to publicise, because this will happen again.

He should be jailed😢

If ever there was an inside man for the Post Office, this is what they would look and sound like. He was supposed to protect his members , he was in fact looking after himself and the Post Office.

Thank you Paul for your insights, George was on a whole other level of pride for himself, the post office and fujitsu. I have recently learned the biblical quote " pride goeth before the fall" is actually "pride goeth before destruction". George is blessed by being so tone deaf he will never have the time to learn critical thinking or self-reflection of the destruction he contributed to creating. I appreciate your words and the look of your vlogs as I am educated by your analysis of events and look forward to your posts.

It's his empathetic ear and bedside manner that attracts me.

He is like the Chief Engineer at Chernobyl. Total denial even after seen the graphite blown on the roof as consequence of the explosion.

He also named Mr Rudkin, a postmaster and an executive on NFSP, as stealing money. Shameless.

George Thompson was one of the only people outside Fujitsu and the Post Office who was in a position to see the size of the problem, and he blindly refused to recognise it. In a very real sense, this mess is his fault.

Seen many examples of this kind of arrogance. Where uneducated and unqualified men find an alternative route to power. The trade union officials where I worked. The councillors who got elected to my local council, via the UKIP or independent route. The shouty men who rant about everything wrong with the "system". Who think everything can be fixed using their "common sense".

The canned applause at the end of each of George's pompous statement, is a master stroke 😂

Even a child knows by now that Horizon was a complete failure

Georges "vast majority" comments are simply an anecdote. These have no place in answering statements of fact and he has no expertise or skillsets that allow him to pass such judgements. The word "robust" should not be used when referring to a system or collections of software as it is impossible to determine that. The error handling, reporting and fix/patch procedures can be suggested to be robust, but not the system itself. However, when looking into how errors where diagnosed, detected, replicated and fixed it is clear the SSC did not have robust procedures for this. They admit on occasion they simply couldn't recreate some of the errors. And so it follows the system is not robust.

Loved the sound of his own voice. He didn't have the imagination or willingness to understand that the NFSP did not have a binary choice, and that if it had supported affected SPMs as it was supposed to, the Horizon system would have worked a lot better much sooner and there would have been far fewer or no miscarriages of justice. But in his binary world view, wrongful criminal convictions were a price worth paying.

When they asked what he did personally? He sent the SPM s an email reminding them not to nick money.

He is just a bully and an embarrassment

He had absolutely no respect for Julian Blake, Sir Wynn or anyone else

Thank you for your exposure of the mindset of this dreadful man.

I believe the POL never had any concern for fixing any and all bugs

Thomson seems to miss the point that you can't be tempted to "put your hand in the till" when the system reconciles your accounts every week and you are immediately liable for any shortfalls, "however caused". Stealing from yourself is never a tempting prospect. If the amounts had been quite small, the argument might just about have been plausible. but who "steals" £30,000, knowing that they will immediately rack up a £30,000 debt? What would be the point?

I wish the NFSP had been even more forceful in their condemnation of this vile character. He either had no idea what a trades union was supposed to do, or else he did know and chose to ignore it. The Post Office had MASSIVE support behind their position. They had millions to spend on lawyers. They did not need the additional support of the organisation which was supposed to be challenging and questioning them and sticking up for the individuals. He was utterly contemptuous of the inquiry, and couldn't even be bothered to wear a tie.

Thankyou Paul, for lifting yet a few more stones on this tragi-comedy.

The overriding measure for this system is "fit for purpose" that's it! He did not accept his members view yet he accepted the management view....! He and the P.O. are complicit in this travisity. Rather than be honest he is focused on showing he is squeaky clean.....he acheived the opposite.

I've been trying to watch the whole interviews on the official enquiry channel but often they are so long and drawn out I don't have time. Thank you so much for your channel! Now I have found someone who is able to not only show the really important points, but also the huge bonus of a psychological break down, and all delivered with your delightful dry humour.....I'm loving it 🎉🎉🎉🎉

What a terrific channel thank you.

A brilliant analysis highlighting the 'two narratives' scenario and working out the bad apples metaphor. What George still doesn't get is that the potentially terrible cost of a bug, statistically rare as it may have been, should have been enough to query the system, try to replicate the error, and cure it. What he and the POL did was cover it up and blame the victims insinuating the rotten apples theory. His argument of statistical insignificance was, and is, wholly inapproriate here. Without it, the whole house-of-cards argument collapses. Liked and subscribed!

I'm going to use "the E word" again; very eloquently put! I'm amazed how you manage to keep so calm whilst explaining these things.

A classic case of being trapped in his own narrative. He cannot admit that he was wrong, or might be wrong, as without his prop that Horizon was OK, his whole world would come tumbling down!!

There are about 11,500 Post Offices, run by agents, with around 4,000 agents having been forced to pay back illusory shortfalls/sacked/prosecuted/civil preceedings for debt/bankruptcy. That's over a third affected over about 15 years, making a mockery of George's assertions about the vast majority. How was that thousands of carefully screened PO agents, many of whom had run PO businesses for ages, suddenly started 'thieving' tens of thousands of pounds of cash from the PO, without any evidence of where the cash had gone - no lavish gifts, Maseratis on the forecourt or taking 12 members of their families on a month's luxury cruise?

How in the f*** Doc have I never seen you. Your use of "Oh my gosh George, sweetheart WTF" and "testy moaney" makes me adore you already. Adding "He was speaking the truth of power". Thank you Doc Duckett. Your new fangurl.

Brilliant analysis beautifully put together. I could listen to you all day.

He needs to be found somewhere.

Thank you so much for this video Dr Duckett. I’m new to your channel and have found your video’s very insightful. 👍🏼

Its the strangest thing, when those in power are admitting there was a problem and yet the person who was meant to protect those suffering the consequence of that problem is refusing to admit there was ever a problem, we have to ask some serious questions. You would expect this man to have been in the pr department of post office, someone whose job was to advance the interests of the corporation and remain convinced of the corporate lines no matter what evidence to the contrary appears. His job was to fight against that, it was to advance the interests of the employees and to ensure an equity existed that protected the rights of those employees against potential abuses of a corporation lead by people who can become corrupt and blame employees for problems that are structural in nature. His final thoughts in which he opined openly about random cases of people he represented that had been caught stealing as if it proved there was never a problem exposes his true rotten nature. He never represented the employees, he uses his union job to advance his own interests, and when it came to it he was happy to throw anyone under the bridge to protect his own position.

I believe that the ‘Union’ have distanced themselves from the testimony of this individual. However, he was in charge for a substantial number of years and what I am wondering is why. Why didn’t the other management members of the Union get rid of this man or did they agree with his take on what was happening at the time. His views are and were beyond the pale but I do think that whoever the people in the management structure of this Union are they also culpable. Edited to add. Excellent analysis, sorry this comment should have preceded my ramble

This is refreshing! I agree with your analysis. Bet he got his own way in meetings with his filibuster technique 😢

I'm guessing that George was on the bonus gravy train too? I'd be interested to know his to know his remuneration when the funding to NPSPM was increased......

Brilliant analysis of (in) curious George, thank you.

He reminded me of union big mouths from the 1970s. Full of themselves, and full of carp. Vile George was in bed with the PO - money talked. He's an embarrassment to Scotland and an embarrassment to humanity, IMHO. Yet another excellent breakdown. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to analyse this oaf's testimony and to post this video.

I've just discovered your channel, and am very pleased to hear your detailed analysis of the behaviour of various witnesses to the PO enquiry. Unpicking the thoughts and motivations behind some really bizarre behaviour really helps put these people into perspective. It seems there is always a rational explanation for their apparently irrational behaviour.

Thanks Paul….somebody needed to explain to me what Curious George the Bombastic Blusterer… what an awful man… there was nothing in his testimony that aligned with what the Inquiry is about

"Catastrophic Human Loss" Yeah. You did the video!!! Thx.. Oh that guy, what a wreck.

I sensed that class anger too, but then hanging onto PV's skirts as he tried to claw his way into a sense of importance and prominence. He's quite narcissistic. You can tell, he had aims to be CEO himself, someday.

George the Union man ,well he was certainly going to support the Post Office Executive at all costs ,his salary, his power ,his importance all depended on him protecting the Organisation, to do that he had to choose he chose to close his eyes to the innocent union members that were suffering terrible injustice, for George the Union man it is about power ,you backed the wrong horse George

His anecdotes of old cases where it was found that these postmasters or staff had the cash stashed at their house contrasted with the cases outlined in this enquiry where the Post Office not only didn’t establish that they had the money or had spent the money but apparently had made little effort to do so simply because if Horizon said they had the money then it was case closed. No other evidence needed.

I have watched a few of your videos now and finally decided to do the subscribe thing 😊 This man was another one who was something else in this inquiry.

The NFPM, have apologised for his comments and behaviour!

This is the most brilliant breakdown summary of the whole Scandal. Thankyou and keep posting 🎉