Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 7

[ickky]

The Tribunal started on 25th April at 10am. If you would like to view online you need to send a request for access as early as possible.

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Abbreviations:

AB: Allison Bailey, claimant
BC: Ben Cooper QC, barrister for AB
SW = Stonewall Equality Limited (respondent 1)
IO = Ijeoma Omambala QC, senior counsel - barrister for SW
RW = Robin White junior counsel to SW - assisting IO
GC = Garden Court Chambers Limited (respondent 2) (GCC would be a better abbreviation)
AH = Andrew Hochhauser QC, senior counsel - barrister for GC
JR = Jane Russell junior counsel to GC - assisting AH
RM= Rajiv Menon QC & SH = Stephanie Harrison QC (jointly respondent 3 along with all members of GC except AB)
EJ = Employment Judge Goodman hearing the case
Panel = any one of the three panel members (EJ and two lay members)

Thread 1 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4529887-Allison-Bailey-v-Stonewall-Employment-Tribunal-hearing?

Thread 2 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4542466-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-2

Thread 3 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4545725-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-3

Thread 4 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4546945-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-4

Thread 5 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4548160-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-5

Thread 6 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4550451-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-6

Going back to the vulnerability of this person - by the same token, if AB is an actual lesbian, then she is going to feel very strongly about issues that affect....lesbians, surely??

They must be realising how silly they sound.

If they didn’t look at the detail provided by a colleague in defence of herself/ to support her complaint when they were in the eye of a damaging Twitter storm it’s because they didn’t want to do so.

I looked at that and thought you meant the Monsoon management hadn't defended their shop floor worker, not that a legal firm hadn't read the words of a colleague.

There's a common pattern to who gets heard and who gets ignored.

Dick Warlock? Is that a real person? Or a character from Flash Gordon?

The Computer Crisis defence is a new one.

You can access Twitter from anywhere....why couldn't she just look it up?

I think LT made reference to it in his testimony.

I used to deal with complaints at a previous job. You couldn't respond to it unless you had all the facts and looked at absolutely everything. Why haven't any of these very well educated people done any research in to this? Even just looking at tweets (which anyone can access). I don't understand it.

I believe the tweet being discussed, one of the "two tweets", was this one:

twitter.com/BluskyeAllison/status/1188365954255863808

The Computer Crisis defence is a new one.

just shoring up the "we/I had stuff going on so couldn't be expected to deal properly" defence

It's just occurred to me that Stonewall are probably going to get away with not being sued left right and centre by diversity champions. Imagine GCC going to court and demanding compensation for the losses and reputational harm.

"Your honour, we regard ourselves as some of the finest legal minds in the land. We decided that Kirrin Medcalf was the right person to give us legal advice on LGBT issues, including HR issues which involve LGBT people or themes, and it is our assertion that Kirrin and Stonewall let us down".

Like many fraudsters Stonewall are going to get away with it, because it is better to suffer the loss than admit the shame.

Good grief. She's worried that their reputation is taking a hammering on Twitter because people on Twitter were saying they were in breach of equality law?

And they're barristers Who actually pride themselves on being au fait with equality and diversity legislation!

genuflecting at Ben

The fundamental question being explored here is:

What was particular about the nature of these complaints that caused GCC to go all Chicken Little?

Even after weeks of the hearing, I still don't feel GCC have answered this.

I've been a manager of multiple teams, and had my own business and have had all sorts of shenanigans to have dealt with over the years.

If someone with X characteristic had been tweeting about charity Y that was said to represent X characteristic and a complaint had been made, I'd have to absolutely say to them 'we've had a compliant in and i need to understand more' and we'd have sat down and talked about it before anything official was triggered. If there were 2 complaints I'd think 'wow, coincidence' and if more than 3 I'd think there was something sinister really going on here. These people are educated and apparently friends so why wouldn't they actually sit down and look into this properly? Especially if they were investing in a scheme financially...

I just don't get it.

This whole "who is most vulnerable" fiasco feels like a mash up All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others and Be Kind.

Women, get to the back of the queue behind everyone else, oh and watch your tone whilst you're doing so.

Fuck OFF

Here is the tweet from GCC:
twitter.com/gardencourtlaw/status/1187403401832943616

Well, we know why, don't we??

The complaint came from the sacred caste who must never be gainsaid...nuff said.

"It was a toxic debate and I didn't really want Chambers to get involved in it" - there is something about this whole area that acted like an anaesthetic on the brain, or the analytic parts of it. there was an awareness throughout society, during the period being discussed, that certain things were going on that some people were angry about, but there was some incredibly successful way of shutting it all away from analysis by calling it all "toxic" and at the same time implying that there was only one locus of "toxicity". I believe that many people literally, literally had NO idea that GC people had a point, or that they could. So pointing to articles and so on - yes we were all there, we all remember it - but does anyone but me remember this dream-like feeling that other people had just sort of been intellectually neutralised? is it just this, or we all like this in many ways on many issues but I myself am just as blind on those other ones?

Can anyone point me to the issue of the vulnerable male colleague? I joined late & until now I was trying to listen against a background of some on a ride-on mower nearby.

I thought someone said GCC didn't have any trans lawyers/employees, so why is his vulnerability relevant?

Did AH just jump in to defend the witness (or possibly deflect a question) and the witness then explained to the judge that she understood what BC is doing and she's fine with it?

That was such an odd exchange, I feel like I missed something.

No. To everyone else it looks like the only difference is the massive pile on from Twitter trans activists

some [expletive deleted] on a ride-on mower

(I forgot asterisks get taken out)

Apparently no one in chambers was interested in Michelle Brewers' complaint email. That was the one that was so dripping in acid, they had to replace some of the networking cables in GCC offices after it had been transferred.

That's exactly what happened, Tasteful.

AlisonDonut

Surely it is - to a large extent - as simple as "we are busy and important high earners and we simply do not have the time to deal with trivial matters properly". With trivial being defined as anything which is not paid work.

Surely that is the whole point of outsourcing?

This is 100% down to GCC trusting Stonewall. If GCC had paid a well respected LGBTQ+ specialist legal firm to advise them on ensuring their HR policies were best practice and in accordance with the law they'd be settling the case with AB and suing their professional advisors for being completely incompetent. The problem here is that it is an incredibly bas look for world class barristers to need to outsource legal advice full-stop, and then, it starts to look 10 times worse when they are outsourcing it to an organisation that employs Kirrin Medcalf calibre people and deliberately misrepresents the law.