Key people
A summary of the key people involved in the circumstances concerning the imprisonment of the "Head of Business Systems"
The Major Players
Chris Gent - it is not the purpose of our publication to praise or decry the achievements of Chris Gent during his time at Vodafone, there are already many excellent analyses available. His role in our report is restricted to the culture in Vodafone at that time, the events leading up to the imprisonment of the 'head' of one of it's major departments, and Mr. Gent's part in the subsequent cover-up. This cover-up had repercussions for a considerable number of people over many years. (Mr Gent wrote a letter to the whistleblower, all unfortunately slightly economical with the truth. One of his statements was "I am confident that Mrs. Best is doing her utmost to address your concerns and deal with this matter in a way which is satisfactory to both yourself and Vodafone.")
Mrs Pauline Best was "Global People Development Director" of Vodafone. She made a number of threats to the whistleblower, evaded any honest answers, quite illegally forced the closedown of a free discussion website, banned any correspondence with anybody involved, then wrote to the whistle-blower that she "had done her utmost to address the concerns but this had not been possible." Her chief motivation was of course the protection of Mr. Chris Gent. She was responsible for the handbook "Vodafone Values" given to each new employee.
Paul Wybrow - the career progression of this devious and totally incompetent person may seem almost unbelievable He consistent conspiracy with the psychopath Paul King (see below) in the destruction of many professional peoples careers was legendary. His first big career move came as a result of Mr. King's imprisonment. They could not leave him there, for there were many people who knew the background. So the solution was simple. After a suitable couple of months, Mr. Paul Wybrow, with the full agreement of Mr Gent, was ‘promoted’ out of the way, to become a “Director of Vodafone International.” Corporate power in an Empire of Fear, and a lesson to others. When the original book was published he no longer had any protection, and was exiled to Belgium. But a much greater promotion awaited, ironically following the further actions of the whistleblower in Belgium. When the whistle-blower obtained a contract at the very same company, panic yet again set in. and Mr Wybrow was immediately and miraculously promoted back to the U.K. in charge of thousands of people. (Mr Wybrow famously responded to the question "does Vodafone care anything about people?" by grinning and shaking his head.)
Paul King was the 'head' of Vodafone's "Business Systems" (essentially Business Analysis) division. This division was responsible for the requirements, design, and implementation of all Vodafone services and products. There were a number of problems. Firstly Mr King was a very, very disturbed psychopath who very cleverly and deliberately destroyed the careers of everybody
(with one wonderful exception) who joined the division. Secondly he had not the slightest knowledge of Business Analysis. Thirdly Mr. King in the empire of fear and obedience was constantly protected by the "Personnel Department" (see below), and of course Paul Wybrow. Shortly before his imprisonment he stood in the centre of the office and loudly declared that "women were no trouble if you hit them". Three guesses why he was sentenced to two years imprisonment. Also just before his imprisonment he shouted "I don't care what I do as long as I can work at Vodafone!"
Some other players - the wonderful women of "Personnel" / "Human Resources"
"The people from Personnel were exclusively women - not a sexist statement but one simply of fact. They of course knew absolutely nothing about the work of any of the departments, and seemed to be there solely to ensure that the rules of social control would be obeyed. They really were an immensely strange group, who were there only for “senior” managers. They were much despised by everybody I worked with." Two examples below.
Alison Stanton - shortly before the imprisonment of Mr. Paul King, the whistleblower went to see her with a detailed report of his actions over the previous year. Three times she gave her absolute word that nobody else would be involved and agreed that it was imperative this was discussed only with Mr King. 'At two o`clock that afternoon, Mrs. Alison Stanton phoned the whistleblower and said "This is Alison. I know I gave you my word that nobody else would be involved, but Paul Wybrow said he`s going to investigate it'. She sounded quite excited." Later: "Mrs. Alison Stanton and Mr. Paul Wybrow were in the office. They both seemed in a state of excited anticipation."Would you say you`ve lost all communication with Mr King?" asked Mrs. Stanton. Mrs. Alison Stanton looked quite excited, and Mr. Wybrow was grinning. "Would I say I`ve lost all communication ? Yes, of course." They were jointly triumphant. In Vodafone it is against the law to lose communication with a severely disturbed psychopath who is further suffering from clinical depression, and who has the most debilitating fears shortly before he was to go to prison.. A dismissable offence."
Jane Boiston - from "Vodafear: " What I (the later whistleblower)
was later to discover was that between the time of Jo`s phone call to me and the interview, the psychopath and his friend, the devious and perfectly useless Mr. Paul Wybrow had ensured Jo’s departure from Vodafone. Jo had gone to see the very same Jane Boiston of `Personnel` in confidence, in an attempt to communicate the harm the Paul King caused. Before she got back to the office, Jane Boiston had phoned the Paul King to warn him. You may wonder, like many others, how anyone could do such a thing, but hopefully the true role of Vodafone`s `Personnel` department may be illustrated in what follows. Paul King lied, blamed, and ranted in his madness, and went to see his friend Paul Wybrow. Paul Wybrow did grinning and shaking his head, and between them they got rid of the fine young lady called Jo. Once Jo had left in tears on Friday evening, Paul King realised that he could do anything he wanted to, and there was nothing anybody could do to prevent it.
Odds and ends- some comments simply to illustrate the environment which existed in Vodafone's culture of fear, obedience, and indoctrination.
John Tingey - who most enjoyed threatening people, particularly women with young children. They are very vulnerable, and an easy target. He also spent much of his time trying to catch people out on expenses. Once he caught out a man who had inadvertently left a sixty pence bottle of water on a hotel bill. No drinks were allowed, and the man’s career was in jeopardy.
"There was an extremely pleasant woman who ran the department next door, who’s name was Judy. One morning she was at my desk in a state of despair. “John Tingey phones me up anonymously each morning, and asks meaningless questions, just to check that I’m in. “ She had three young children, and had asked if she could arrive fifteen minutes late at 8.45 am so that she could take her children to school, and she would work half an hour longer in the evening. This had of course been refused, and John Tingey then phoned her anonymously and aggressively each morning at 8.30 am precisely to check. “What can I do, she continued, “we need the money and I can’t get on a train to London each morning. I can’t go to Personnel, nobody can.”
Niall Garrett worked in the same department as John Tingey. He specialised in finding reasons for not doing anything. He was reasonably good at this, his lack of intelligence, imagination, or creativity equipping him well for the task.
The very fine man called Robert, who designed everything and helped everybody, was the designer of Vodafone’s, and probably Europe’s, first Pre-Pay system for mobile phones. It is difficult to remember a time when there were no pre-pay phones, and the concept was quite radical. This man worked night and day, and produced the first definition ( I actually helped him on some aspects, and for some weeks we had a friendly rivalry as to who had worked the longest hours – 1,2 or 3am in the morning was not unusual). The document ran to over ninety pages, and covered every aspect from network design to top-up in shops, from banking partner interfaces to voucher codes. It was the basic service design which would shortly make Vodafone vast fortunes out of pre-pay phones.
As usual, it had to be distributed to every part of Vodafone.
One quiet afternoon, Robert called out to the office “Come and look at this, it’s Niall Garrett’s response.” And so we gathered round his terminal.
Robert revealed Niall Garrett’s responses. It read :
“On page 36 you have missed the d off of enhance. This proves to me this document has not been reviewed.”
There were exclamations of disbelief, much laughter, and re-reading. There was nothing else just this sentence, and confirmation of rejection.
The new man said “Change it to denhance and send it back !”. General collapse into roaring laughter. Brilliant.
Paul Kerridge - this very nasty piece of work is included only to illustrate some aspects of how the psychopath Paul King continually blamed every member of the Business Systems department, understood nothing about business analysis, and was a compulsive liar.
From Vodafear : "In the middle of this, I went into Paul King's office. “There have been so many complaints about Paul Kerridge, he’s got no idea what he’s doing, and you told Nicki Hodgson he’d make a good business analyst!” I uttered to him. He shook his head in absolute certainty. “I never said that, I never said that” In the following team meeting, when Mr. Kerridge’s name was mentioned, Paul King recalled how he’d had trouble with somebody and a friend had gone and knocked the man out. He would get in touch with this person, and get them to knock Paul Kerridge out.” This was of course all pure fantasy.
