Maya Forstater Tribunal March 2022- Thread 3

[Whatamesssss]

Thread one, here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4498167-Maya-Forstater-hearing-starts-Monday

Thread two, here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4505825-Maya-Forstater-Tribunal-March-2022-Thread-2?pg=1

@Xenia and @TensionWheelsCooIHeels thank you both for explaining your experience of similar processes: your insights are helpful to those who, like me, are entirely ignorant of what happens.

I'd hope that if we can attend Allison Bailey's hearings then I will understand more of what's involved after this baptism by public observer status.

Sierra makes a very important point about employment law and discrimination above. For this bit of employment law you do not have have to be a PAYE employee.

On this point "Yes. Even worse, really, he seems to imply that he let her go, not because her beliefs were offensive, because it was all too much aggro to have someone hold beliefs that were different from other people in the organisation." It is a bit like in the old days when a Catholic or orthodox Jewish school would not employ someone living in sin who was not married because that was and to an extent still is the fundamental rule of the religion - no sex outside marriage whereas it is not illegal under the civil law.

If you would be the only brexiteer in the office or only remainer (or Tory voter or unvaccinated one or any other topic which might be) and someone know if you are hired it will mean terrible issues at work do they have to keep on with the hiring process. Or if everyone is really racist in a particular workplace due to their local culture there should the employer not employ someone very different who will go down very badly with other workers?]
The issue in this case is that the individual wants to be allowed to state facts and the others want to peddle their cooked albeit popular trans theories of self declaration etc.

I know some posters keep cautioning us we’re wasting our money giving money to the legal fundraisers.

I’d just like to reassure them I’m very happy with the return on my contribution to this one

The entertainment value of reading BC’s cross examination of the GI ideology belief system is well worth it

I’d just like to reassure them I’m very happy with the return on my contribution to this one

Me too, however it goes.

WORIADS does sound like the sort of thing you need to have lasered off.

"I’d just like to reassure them I’m very happy with the return on my contribution to this one"

Yes, it was definitely worth it.

Thank you Tension. Your post was really helpful

@Ereshkigalangcleg

WORIADS does sound like the sort of thing you need to have lasered off.

What is WORIADS??

[quote EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]**@Xenia* and @TensionWheelsCooIHeels* thank you both for explaining your experience of similar processes: your insights are helpful to those who, like me, are entirely ignorant of what happens.

I'd hope that if we can attend Allison Bailey's hearings then I will understand more of what's involved after this baptism by public observer status.[/quote]
I'd defer to Xenia here, as she's an actual solicitor! I'm just observing from the sidelines😁

TheUsual worthy of respect in a democratic society

@Redshoeblueshoe

TheUsual worthy of respect in a democratic society

In MF's 1st Employment Tribunal, Judge James Tayler judged that she failed the Grainger criteria and her beliefs were Not Worthy of Respect In A Democratic Society.

On appeal, Judge Akhlaq Choudhury overturned that ruling and found that MF's beliefs did meet the Grainger criteria and so, by extension, are Worthy Of Respect In A Democratic Society.

Quick message to say I'm not Mole At The Counter, just a big fan

Thanks for the love of my username, I couldn’t believe that it was free when I picked it. My blood has been boiling with some of the stuff I have recently been reading on the feminism board. I am humbled that my name was noticed amongst these absolutely amazingly women standing up for all our rights, tabby, transcribing and others with experience explaining the court case. For Maya and soon Alison who are prepared to put their heads above the parapet. In taking on the onslaught of misogyny aimed at anything not male centric. This week there seems to be a tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel

Just seen this on twitter, so will leave it here to fill the gap until the feature film (starring Damian Lewis) comes out.

twitter.com/JoelSnape/status/1504841205678542855

@Redshoeblueshoe

TheUsual worthy of respect in a democratic society

Ahhh of course!

Thanks. It was distracting me when I was trying to follow along earlier

@AlsoNotAGirl

I know some posters keep cautioning us we’re wasting our money giving money to the legal fundraisers.

I’d just like to reassure them I’m very happy with the return on my contribution to this one

The entertainment value of reading BC’s cross examination of the GI ideology belief system is well worth it

💯

Have finally caught up - these have been absolutely epic threads and I have been absolutely blown away by the level of knowledge and critical analysis by the posters here as well as the skill of the transcribers.

Ben Cooper is absolutely kicking ass by the sound of it.

I'm reading all the tweets from the tribunal totally agog.

I hadn't really paid much attention to the first ET and this is possibly a really stupid question. It seems that all of these emails etc are just being used as evidence now. Why did they not come to light in the first ET? I'm baffled that the first one didn't go her way given how damning the evidence is?

They focused on the protected characteristic of belief. That was the issue which was dealt with first and the case was lost on those grounds. NWORIAD. This was overturned in the appeal and it was WORIAD. Then the original tribunal could take place, as the EA grounds for bringing the case were valid.

I've missed the S off NWORIADS and WORIADS, apologies

@Ereshkigalangcleg

They focused on the protected characteristic of belief. That was the issue which was dealt with first and the case was lost on those grounds. NWORIAD. This was overturned in the appeal and it was WORIAD. Then the original tribunal could take place, as the EA grounds for bringing the case were valid.

Thank you!

@Awkwardy

It's like watching Kasparov playing chess against a bucket of potato peelings

That is very funny

This may have been covered somewhere but I can’t find it. Why are we not going to hear from Ellen McKenzie? She seems to be up to her neck in Maya’s dismissal.

@TensionWheelsCooIHeels and @Xenia

Thanks so much for your detailed answers to my questions. It's really interesting to have perspectives from people with experience of these processes. I never really thought about how the legal process works until watching this tribunal.

One more question I have - are employment tribunals usually as exciting as this?

I would never in a million years sit and watch a court case play out normally but this has been riveting and I felt really compelled to tune in for hours every day. I'm now making a mental note of the fact that BC will be grilling Stonewall and Garden Court for Alisson Bailey and later the Open University for Jo Phoenix and I'm planning ahead to make time to watch - like it's a return of my favourite series or something!

I previously watched a live stream of Harry Miller's JR appeal but found it quite impenetrable/a lot of legalese and felt like the barrister wasn't very confident with his own arguments, although thankfully HM did end up with a win. Maybe JR is less compelling than watching witnesses obfuscate and make strange "without identity we are just a corpse" statements!

@MangoSeason

This may have been covered somewhere but I can’t find it. Why are we not going to hear from Ellen McKenzie? She seems to be up to her neck in Maya’s dismissal.

The @legalfeminist account on twitter did a really good explanation of why EM might not have been called.

twitter.com/legalfeminist/status/1504462203793072136?s=20&t=stnMqlXnuZ5-HFchJIOR-g

For people not on twitter, legalfeminist tweeted that:

Each party decides which witnesses it will call. @CGDev must have thought that the witnesses it has decided to call would be able to put their case in its best light.

If someone who seems to have had a key role in a particular case isn't called, it's open to the tribunal to draw inferences from the fact that that party has chosen not to call them.

So each party has a tactical judgement to make: (a) how much damage will this witness will do to our case if we call them? (b) how much damage will not calling this witness do to our case? (c) which of (a) and (b) is worse?

Litigants often think that their witnesses will help them win their case: so they sometimes think more witnesses means a stronger case. Claimants will sometimes say "It's not fair - it's just me against 5 witnesses from my employer."

This is a mistake.

Witnesses far more often lose cases than win them.

Which is to say, if the case tips decisively one way or another in the course of oral evidence, that's much more often because a witness comes badly unstuck in cross-examination than because their oral evidence is particularly compelling.

These are general observations.

But one way of looking at witnesses - still speaking generally - is that each witness you call gives counsel on the other side another mouse to play with.