A few comments from observing yesterday afternoon, once I finally managed to get sound and video.
IB was very reluctant to answer questions, as evidenced by the long paused before answers on many occasions. She used several techniques, often repeatedly, to avoid straight answers to questions:
- "not necessarily" to mean that we can ignore the people the question was centring
- "maybe potentially" to mean "you have a point, but you can't get me to admit it clearly"
- "hazard a guess that I would be female" to mean "you know, and I know, that I am obviously female, but it would be more than my job's allyship's worth to admit that"
- "that would be excluding/isolating" when referring to a trans person, but the same action in reference to a GC woman would need to be "referred to HR"
- "potentially" means "yes, but I don't want to admit it"
- "to an extent, yes" in response to "your job is to advocate for everyone's rights"
Unfortunately for IB, the judge is likely to have seen right through all this, and I would be astonished if in the judgement her wriggling obfuscation is not highlighted.
In my opinion, her most effective ploy was repeatedly referring to following statutory guidance, but she could hardly answer every question with that, and she really had nothing else. Copying and pasting other DEI policies didn't come across anywhere near as well. And as several posters have highlighted, her bias towards (LGB)TQ allyship was blatant, and NC shone a searchlight on it.