Sara Morrison vs Belfast Film Festival

[NorthernIrishFeminist]

Employers seem to be slow learners when it comes to women's rights! There’s another employment tribunal case being brought by a woman who attended and took the microphone at a Let Women Speak event in Belfast last year and has been treated very badly by her employer Belfast Film Festival as a result.

Looks like we’re going to have to keep gardening until they get the message.

disclaimer. I don’t know Sara and have no connection to BFF I’m just a woman who likes donating to causes that make a difference

Thank you.
Nature of business (SIC)

• 82990 - Other business support service activities not elsewhere classified

Well that's abundantly clear isnt' it?🙄

From NW

sorry should add NC said something about - because of the advice you have taken
MD I could have disciplined SM at any time and I was going to talk to her, but I knew I had to speak to her and I was going to speak to her but we're a small team and it was a busy time
NC you're saying at some point when you got around to it after 16 April and there was nothing about what happened on 3 and 4 July to engage Think People on the 5th.
MD I needed space and time for both SM and me to consider and think about it
NC and is the reason you didn't do anything on 18 April - when you had all the facts
MD I didn't have all the facts
NC so was that not enough
MD another thing that emerged was the convo with the filmmaker
NC is this Caleb
MD yes
NC we'll come back to that tomorrow
NC none of those complaints on 4 and 5 July have anything to do with SM's criticism of women's groups
NC they were about transphobia
MD none of them said anything about transphobia
NC she was guilty of wrongthink
MD what's that
NC having dangerous opinions
MD I've never heard of wrongthink in my life
NC that's why I said dangerous opinions
MD can we stick to what's said in the emails
NC dangerous opinions is in the email
MD I want to get the language in this right. the right language is important in this debate.

[NC wants to move on but J notes the time. Big discussion about tomorrow. It looks like MD is going to be in the chair for 2 hours more. I don't think we're starting until 11.30am tomorrow, so we're going to have MD for most of tomorrow and perhaps one other witness]

NC she was guilty of wrongthink
MD what's that
NC having dangerous opinions
MD I've never heard of wrongthink in my life
NC that's why I said dangerous opinions
MD can we stick to what's said in the emails
NC dangerous opinions is in the email
MD I want to get the language in this right. the right language is important in this debate

MD really want to control things, doesn't she? And control what NC says, and how she says it, in 'the right language'?

To be fair I don't think there is a code for HR services. A lot of consultancies use that code.

Never heard of wrongthink?
She needs a reading list.

Fair nuff

It’s pretty striking,@MarieDeGournay - I wonder what MD’s barrister is thinking, watching this display.

I think this would be a good idea!

This afternoon's session:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1988968164730995106.html

MD I want to get the language in this right. the right language is important in this debate
Yet again, NC's professionalism comes into play, resisting the temptation to grab MD by the lapels, lift her off the chair and say
'Listen, buster, you'll get the language in this debate that I decide you'll get, you aren't the boss of me and the language I use. Capisce?'😁

I think that Think People tell you how to get rid of Wrong Thinkers when their Thought Police Boss thinks that they should be sacked for aforesaid Wrong Think.

Except MD doesn't think she's heard of Wrong Think.
But she's banjaxed anyway by NC I'm thinking.

Anyone want to make a GC HR consultancy called WrongThinkPeople?

For somebody who works in the arts not to have heard of wrongthink is mind boggling.

Or utter lies.

I am concerned about what someone said upthread about the judges apparent attitude to NC

I'm less concerned about that after MD's evidence. Taking a 'more in sorrow than anger' line in the emails is sensible, but it will be badly undermined if you act the lig while under oath.

That was me I think. Just my view. I feel the Judge was very tetchy with NC, but that's just from following what's reported here, and via Nick's reports. I may be wrong, what do you think?

I hope that's just about getting used to her detailed questioning which has no obvious point of arrival - which is the whole point of it!
But MD has been surprisingly cheeky - she got told off by the judge yesterday for making a joke about Sarah Palin 'a tribunal is no place for a joke'- but it doesn't seem to have stopped her today.
I wonder what the judge will make of her attitude - it's one thing to disrespect NC, but she has already been reprimanded for disrespecting the tribunal .

At times we seemed to be getting Jamie Bryson levels of cheekiness, and that never goes down well with a judge.

(Anyone who doesn't know who Jamie Bryson is, look up a clip of him speaking. You can't get the full Bryson experience in text form.)

I've not had the time to follow this thread properly, but thanks to everyone who keeps it running.

NC is clearly a powerhouse.

'MD I want to get the language in this right. the right language is important in this debate.'

This makes me think that MD reckons that her virtuous opinion is going to win the day here.

This isn't a 'debate', it's a tribunal.

She really hasn't got the measure of the seriousness of her position.

IMHO.

Ah, I thought you were an observer. Anyone watching getting a feel for how it’s going?

MD seemed quite cheeky about omitting the SM-supportive emails from her WS. I can't imagine that would have impressed the judge.

From NW

Sorry. Rushed out to get some photos. Now closing down the thread with the usual messages. Thanks v much for reading this far. If you…

… would like to make even a tiny one-off contribution you’ll get the nightly newsletter summary of each day’s proceedings.

https://genderblog.net/donate/

I am going back to my spartan lodgings to write tonight’s before we reconvene at 1130 tomorrow.

Adieu. End of thread.

IANAL but I think quite often ET judges, and judges in general (the good ones anyway) have a lot of compassion for ordinary folk, so to speak, put under the pressure of the witness box.

I suspect he'll have even more compassion for a witness facing NC. He will undoubtedly be aware of how instrumental she was to the FWS judgement and her resourcefulness with regard to the ongoing NHSFife case. I suspect he will be aware of Elves' rising star status too.

That compassion won't generally run to more than being kind to them in person and perhaps not completely savaging them on a personal level in any judgements but when it comes to the evidence she has presented it becomes all about her credibility, as far as I understand it, and that relationship between credibility and the evidence as presented to the ET.

The fact that she answered glibly to the question about why she hadn't included the supportive emails in her WS will not serve the idea of her credibility well.

She'd have done better to say something along the lines of, 'That was an oversight. I should have done.'

If she had been more credible the judge might have inferred that her counsel should have asked her if there were such and suggested she include them but because of the lack of credibility he might infer that she was holding things from her counsel too.

I think she copied that directly from something NC had said earlier when MC questioned her words about something else.

It follows a pattern as I think she has also copied what MC has said (rubbish and something else).

I don't think she's conscious of doing it but it doesn't help her credibility -- although her tone is doing much more damage when coupled with her big promise to produce evidence which failed to materialise within the 137 pages of additional disclosure.