Maya Forstater Tribunal March 2022- Thread 2

[Sophoclesthefox]

Forgive the presumption, @Mforstater, but you’re probably busy in the pub right now, or passing on all of the fan mail to you legal team so I’ve made a new thread to carry on the fascinating discussion.

Round up your cats, rabbits and weasels, and let’s go!

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From thread one, here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4498167-Maya-Forstater-hearing-starts-Monday

Hi all,

Thank you so much for all your support: emotional, intellectual, financial, spiritual(!) reading the Mumsnet feminism board is where this all started for me!

The case starts tomorrow.

It is all online. If you want to watch you need to email the tribunal for a log in to [email protected]

It kicks off at 10am - the first bit will be "admin" between the judges and the lawyers working out the timings, issues and any reporting restrictions hmm.

Once that is all sorted the judge and the panel will go away to read (probably for the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday)

I will most likely give evidence Wednesday and Thursday.

@tribunaltweets will be tweeting the whole thing (assuming they get permission from the judge)

Links to papers will go up throughout the case at www.hiyamaya.net.

Any other questions I am happy to answer them (apart from the ones where I have to say "that is for the tribunal to hear"...)

I have made a spectators guide with FAQs etc here

Lots of love

Maya

I had a phone call in the middle of the questioning about consultants and what can and can't be said regarding genitalia, sexual behaviour etc. Can anyone provide the link that the twitter thread please?

I wonder whether diversity consultants like QI have professional indemnity insurance and would be able to make a claim to reimburse some of CGD's legal expenses incurred in this matter?

I wish I was @Pluvia --- I was using LEs logic from yesterday when they were being questioned ..

Oh how wonderful if CGD were to sue QI.

MP agrees that he didn't tell MF what the process was and what the accusations were.

@drwitch

And another one!

BC: When you got claimant's statement, did you investigate QI consultants for saying things that challenge other people's reality and identity?

MP: No we did not

🤦🏻‍♀️

Whenever there's a witch hunt or whatever, the whole point is often that what is being accused is frequently what the accuser is actually doing or has done - but for 'righteous' reasons of course so they get a free pass.

People in glass houses, eh?

MP seems to be saying that things were arranged so that MF didn't contribute more into "the process" because that would inflame the situation.

@WearyLady if you go on Twitter you can search for 'TribunalTweets' and it'll suggest the Forstater hearing.

BC now tackling MP on MF being excluded from a disciplinary process that was all about her.

I thought from Maya's witness statement that Mark Plant would come out better than some of the other witnesses.

Reading between the lines, he was put in a really crappy position. Decisions were made about personnel in the office he ran by senior leadership in the American mothership. He tried to challenge them and was removed from the conversation. He was then required to communicate an obfuscated version of what had happened to the team member who had been f*cked over. That version changed several times (no employment, just VF. Oh there's a challenge to the VF. Oh sorry, no VF either.) increasingly unfair ways. Now he's hauled in front of an employment tribunal to absorb the flak for those senior leaders who he disagreed with in the first place - and who had no care for UK employment law.

I know he's a bit of a weasel, but I think he's just getting to learn how little his loyalty to CGD will be valued. Everyone else in this has stayed true to themselves (Maya refused to recant her beliefs; the American CGD staff are true believers). Mark Plant is the only one who has compromised his values for some dubious goal. And that kind of moral injury hits hard.

I'm very surprised CGD wanted him as a witness though. His own paper trail from the time noted differences between how Maya's views were treated Vs other controversial topics and shows he was uncomfortable with the decisions being made regarding her employment. Making him stand up and "equivocate" about what was happening doesn't make the evidence go away, it just draws attention to it.

I'm predicting Masood Ahmad won't come out terribly either. He only seems to have got involved at the very end after various others have kicked up a huge fuss. He then seems to have largely made a business decision based on appeasing the Washington office. It's not good, but I don't think we're going to see the kind of ridiculous zealotry on show from the witnesses earlier in the week.

I am not sure how much it costs to get transcripts of the court proceedings (I imagine it is not cheap) and nor am I sure who is entitled to ask for them and what they can do with them, but I will certainly contribute to the costs if needed as this really needs to be preserved for posterity, whatever the outcome.

In some courts they can be requested by any of the parties and I'd estimate the charge being a couple of hundred pounds per day. That's based on a teeny County Court case I was involved in a decade ago.

We had to get a trial transcript once (work thing) and it was about £1,000 per full day of trial apparently. That was a criminal case (fraud).

Gosh, a fair bit more than I'd expected.

I would think (having just been briefed by my own lawyer about something) that MP has been briefed by their lawyers to just answer the questions and not to get drawn into argy bargy, because judges hate that and it just gives BC more ammo. Hence why he's coming across as 'flat', because he's following that very good advice.

From reading the witness statement I would say that MP valued MF and her work and thought that asking her to take some moderating steps, which she did, was quite adequate.

GDC are learning the hard way that no words or different expression will quell the rage of gender ideologues. And gender ideologues are learning at least their beliefs are protected alongside GC beliefs

Employers across the land shudder & have another gin

From the email MP sent to a PR professional (not actually used in the end) one might deduce that personnel issues/ fallings out were nothing new to CGD.

Well, since you've got mixed together academics, social justice zealots, and aspiring politicians, I'd expect CGD to be a place of perpetual warfare.

Crikey, just catching up and have missed a lot of the QI report stuff. It's clearly a very unfair process.

BC now questioning MP about email from MF about feeling 'anxious, precarious' over Christmas, not knowing what had been said about her or the nature of the complaints.

MP confirms this.

MP: "I didn't know either [what the process was]."

This is so telling.

What May be possible to do is obtain the audio of the hearing? Given there are not transcribers in situ, obtaining a transcript would mean the court getting someone to transcribe. I don’t know if it would be possible to obtain the audio and divide the transcribing among volunteers.

@tabbycatstripy

Crikey, just catching up and have missed a lot of the QI report stuff. It's clearly a very unfair process.

US employment conditions are so light touch it's difficult for me to have a sense as to whether this is counted as unfair in the US or the everyday manner in which they conduct their hire and fire policies.

BC says MF didn't know when it would be decided what the process is, what its aims are (apart from the fact that it's about tweets).

MP: I thought I had described some of that to her.

BC: I do not know if it is disciplinary.

MP: I thought I'd indicated this to her.

BC: MF didn't know when she might be told the answers.

MP: No. Nor did I.

BC: She concludes she is left in distress and isolation.

MP: Y.

BC: You reply to effect that he understands and is pushing things, come and talk tomorrow.

MP: Y

BC: But you didn't until 14th Jan

MP: Scheduling difficulties.

BC: But what you didn't do, is provide clear and transparent answers.

MP: N

BC: Ms S produced final report on 13 Jan.

MP: Y

BC: Email emphasised in second paragraph that she had carried out no independent investigatino, so full extent of the fact-finding was limited material we have looked at.

MP: Y

BC: With your briefing.

MP: Y

BC: Bundle: Ms S concludes on question - is claimant's conduct in breach of anti-harassment policy - is there is insufficient basis on the evidence to fairly say that.

MP: Where is that?

BC: paragraph 10

MP: Y, then she explains.

BC: Then, she notes - based on combination of written and verbal briefing from you - that there is no corporate position, written policy or guidance on parameters of such external debates, and positions thereon, which she should have known about.

MP: Y

BC: Then, in answer to question of reputational risk, her opinions on public forum may be associated... If MF's views are inconsistent with CGD's policies, but her understanding is there is no such policy. So she dismisses reputational risk.

MP: Y

BC: She says there are different opinions on whether MF's tweets represent a rep risk, and no guidance in the handbook. Is it fair to say, then, there was no clear or consistent view or evidence on reputational risk?

MP: Y

BC: You had briefed Ms S to effect that there were different opinions about risk of reputational damage, and the effect of her conclusion, is that there was no clear basis for finding such a risk.

MP: Y

BC: If we look ahead, we see email from you on 22 Feb that says there is some PR risk but in UK the PR risk could run in opposite direction. Reflects same divergence of views doesn't it?

MP: Y

BC: It would be unkind of me to ask how it's all panned out...

MP: No comment.

BC: Back to bundle: I can ask you, Ms S is very clear the respondent's should not be seen to be making a decision about MF's future without MF having chance to know and comment?

MP: Y

BC: (Asks MP to read a section to himself)

Some discussion of MP's comment that reputational damage (of being associated with MF) might actually go the other way, given the context in the UK. BC: "And it would be unkind of me to ask how that's going..."

(Oops, cross post.)