How Low, How High?

Just read a 2018 essay on the estimable Tommy Flowers [blog posts passim], by Thomas Haigh of The University of Wisconsin in the IEEE annals of the History of Computing, outlining his background, rise and eventual [effectively] sidelining in the postwar years; his achievements for the war effort not becoming publicly-known until 1976: a true Working Class Hero. His achievements went unsung for so long because of government secrecy rules, even though the technology that he employed in the creation of the machine to aid in breaking the German Lorenz cypher was obsolete, even by the 1960s.

Today, also, we watched the bulk of the first day's testimony to the Post Office enquiry by its former Chair, Alice Perkins, who, in lockstep with her former CEO, Paula Vennell's testimony and so many others interrogated thus far, remembered in great detail all that would not impinge on her own self in a court of law, should it eventually come to that. In a sea of pinpoint recall with strategically placed oases of total amnesia shot through it, we gather a growing picture of a cabal of senior executives at the centre of the affair, operating under a cloud of secrecy, and indeed a greater imperative to boot.

Whatever one's impression of the frustrated exit of Susan Crichton from the organisation - without acting as a whistleblower on her way out - it is obvious from the enquiry thus far that she was marginalised and excluded by the cabal because she wanted some rather uncomfortable truths about the affair and Post Office Limited outed and dealt with at a time when POL was frantically scrabbling to keep the whole thing under wraps and within their close control.

I mentioned the Tommy Flowers piece deliberately to reflect on the nature of establishment secrecy in the UK; which, along with its electronic surveillance of its citizenry, must rank alongside bloody North Korea in the pantheon of secretive societies - I'm not actually paranoid, but you know what I mean - which prevents public knowledge of anything deemed by the ruling powers to be of a 'sensitive' nature. When it comes to wartime or with issues of general national security in peacetime, it's hard not to accept it; but it's when it comes to influencing the day-to-day running of our country by our elected officials, then it becomes decidedly iffy.

The nexus here, in my estimation, is between Alice Perkins, a former senior civil servant in both the Treasury and The Cabinet Office before being parachuted into her rôle with POL; Paula Vennells, who also ended up in The Cabinet Office as a non-executive director after she left POL; and the software company at the heart of the scandal, ICL, now owned by Fujitsu and named as such. Oh, and of course The Official Secrets Act, to which both Perkins and Vennells, to name but two of those involved would perforce be bound, due to their respective rôles within the halls of the civil service and the government of the day. The cold, clammy hands of Whitehall are all over this one, mark my words. To use the oft-repeated quote from  'All The President's Men': "Follow the money..." There's some very dodgy shenanigans at the bottom of this which stretch back bloody decades, and fraudulent book-keeping is at the very heart of it all. Just my personal opinion, for what it's worth...