Sara Morrison vs Belfast Film Festival - Thread 2

[TwoLoonsAndASprout]

Continuation of previous thread - don’t have all the details to hand to add here, so if someone can pop them on, pls do! Want to get this up quickly!

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Also - credit to @Justabaker and her team of Tribunal Tweeters. Incredible resource and changed the entire power balance of this debate.

Light & oxygen are so important!

There was Gillian McKeith who sometimes styled herself 'Dr' because of some distance learning she'd done.

The late drummer of Rush, Neil Peart, was affectionately nicknamed 'Professor'.

Does she play the piano for an avuncular raconteur?

Isn't this what Gillian McKeith did from some unaccredited place in the US? - which is why she had to stop using the title "Dr"

Professor is what folk in US and Canada call their lecturers on a day to day basis but it’s not an honorific so you wouldn’t, say, have in your passport ‘Professor’ unless you actually had been given that officially.

Quite often lecturers will have the job title ‘associate professor’ but again not an honorific.

I've read the whole of thread 1 and now this one in one go. I'm acquaintances with a couple of the people mentioned, it's so gripping.

And then there's Oxford, which decided officially to give certain of its academics the title Professor without actually giving them chairs or paying them any more! (I think they have the job title "associate professor", originally a US thing but becoming more common here; most universities wouldn't use the title Professor for those people, but I think Oxford got fed up with having their people poached for chairs elsewhere!)

From Julie Hull (@rivier) on X about NC:

She’s identified the first ever case of Schrödinger’s Fibromyalgia - it either exists or doesn’t, depending on whether the claimant’s legal team notices that the alleged sufferer has just outed herself in court as a hardcore transmaid.

😂

So today some attendees commented that when they had looked originally there was data re “Prof” Boyd. But since then it had been scrubbed.

It’s not a witch hunt but google anyone else in the room and it’s all there to see.

Judge, barristers, solicitors, claimant, respondent etc etc.

A barrister of 30 years call makes a call, knowing the risk she takes. She calls bull or something that looks like a bull, maybe it’s a Moose 🫎. And now people are curious. And it also looks like bull to them when they go looking.

CVs of lay panel judges that are verified should be a good place to start in the interests of open justice.

Its really not a witch hunt. This is the UK justice system, admirered and respected across the world. Justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done. Any whiff of apparent bias must be investigated and removed.

It's really weird to not be able to find anything academic about someone calling themself Professor.

My DH is the world's lowest achieving academic, and has a terrible name for Googling - first thousand odd pages are about a serial killer. Next thousand are more successful academics with the same name.

However if I put in his name and vague area, there he is. With a Google AI intro and everything.

I've looked into applying to be a member of a different tribunal and you get a whole list of the current members + plus brief bios. It's weird to me that you don't have the same for Employment Tribunals, and that a panel member could have such a strange internet footprint.

I know people who have been very minor business people but have been in all the networks, fashionable causes, schmoozing functions and industry award ceremonies (the ones where all the members who set up the awards get an “award” on a rotational basis) These people always seem to be in line for panel and board roles, with very little substance behind them other than everyone knows them. They get waved through without oversight and the real movers and shakers roll their eyes and snigger at how person x landed a cushy role on the Chamber of Commerce board or similar when they have never actually done anything or run anything. Boards and panels are full of Walter Mitty types.

I could imagine this type of thing happens in NI too.

And it should be easily cleared up if all above board surely?

These are very easy questions to answer for straightforward people.

I can provide proof of my qualifications, professional registrations including online database checkable PIN, previous jobs, dbs, even my PTA positions recorded with the charity commission with a few clicks. I've never lied about any of it so can be verified both online, on paper and by many many witnesses of verifiable standing.

The idea that being able to do the same for someone in such a position of potential power and authority is deemed too nitpicky or personal doesn't wash.

Not sure how wanting to know the credentials of a tribunal panel member is witch hunting. It's someone participating in a judicial body, we ought to be able to see and verify any professional qualifications!

Say more 🧐

I’ll say something- BFF is poorly governed and anyone attached to it should steer clear.

This straw house will blow away at the slightest close look into the sleazy board WhatsApps, off colour jokes, employee contracts a decade out of date, no policies, no plan and gender wang out the wazoo.

The public purse is funding this operation. The working class people that Mark Cousins identifies with. He sits in their houses.

So they get £90000 from Belfast City Council and £80,000 from NI Screen. So it’s all publicly funded.

Spend all their efforts on the sexy special characteristics rather than age or disability or religion: “LGBTQI+ Friends”

Have a job that allows them to have a chill out day. They don’t actually have a plan - oh no we were chock a block and didn’t do our jobs.

Working class are cleaning floors in hospitals where people are leaking blood and vomiting. No one goes we were so choc a bloc in the pub in June so let’s leave the vom for a few weeks.

But a CEO sends a email saying sure get drunk and be hungover. We will spend £2000 erecting the screen. And probably spend more thousands on our salaries sending these types of emails. You the working class paid out of the public purse £100,000 for this screen. Oh and you’ll be delicate since you will be drinking, likely I’ll be drinking. Oh and we will have to pay for a license and copyright fees to show you the movies.

Oh and I haven’t checked who I’m sending it to so send it on. And I don’t have a plan so tell me your ideas. I’ll steal them.

So yes you working class hero - come and watch Wizard of Oz and Encanto. It will likely cost you hundreds of pounds as a tax payer.

While in reality most people have a Disney subscription and can’t afford to lie around nursing their hangovers on bean bags. They are actually doing their jobs and adding value.

From Michelle’s email:

“Planning a PRIDE ON THE BIG SCREEN chillout day at the new Belfast Stories site - opposite the Sunflower (Union St / Kent St).

Unfortunately, in June we were choc-a-block so didn’t get time to submit to the pride
brochure.

We want the film day to be a relaxing affair for those who want to nurse their hangover on one of our beanbags ... or get out of the house with the kids - we are thinking of starting with x2 family films ...
maybe the Wizard of Oz / Encanto??. And of including some short films made by local LGBTQI+ filmmakers (Conan McIver's brilliant Dam?). Pedro has put his oar in for PRIDE the film. Maybe nothing with subtitles, coz we all might be feeling a bit delicate on the Sunday.

We would love the pportunity to co-design this day with you, time is tight... we would be happy to meet / chat with you this week ... it would be great it if you could give us a ring/drop us a note with your thoughts / ideas.

Please share to groups/individuals we may have missed.

In Solidarity and with Pride
Michele Devlin
Director
Belfast Film Festival
& Docs Ireland

I was wondering about this @CrocsNotDocs Am in the NHS so while you do get prizes, and networking, and small groups of mates running conferences it doesn't appear on the same level as displayed in this tribunal.

Lots of awards, more women's business groups than it seems could possibly be necessary in a very small country.

Is all of the private sector like this? Or are there people running highly successful businesses despite never bothering?

Various dodgy types wash around t'internet and elsewhere giving themselves titles they haven't really earned. I came across a bloke on various blogs etc who stayed himself 'Dr.' It didn't feel right, so I had a hunt. Turned out he had a 'doctoral level certificate' awarded to him by a tiny body with no accreditation run by a group of people who look, tbh, like a fine set of cranks.

The older I get, the more cynical and suspicious I become...

If you can't find a professor's publications online, well...

I haven't followed this case from the beginning so I could be wrong - does this mean that the director of the film festival is mates with a tribunal member? Surely not!

This made me laugh:

https://x.com/mar2vickers/status/1989348294913597765?t=YpEkCrBYQwic7yDm4SvmMA&s=19

All this business about a small population doesn't sit well with me. According to AI (I know) Belfast has a population of nearly 350,000 people, with over 1 million in the wider area. That's not small. I suspect it's a case of same planet, different worlds. Most of the population of Belfast just don't move in those circles.

My large regional city has an annual Chamber of Commerce awards night, plus a separate women in business awards night.

If you are an actual business person or industry leader, you would be rolling around on the floor holding your sides laughing at the people who receive these awards. The women in business awards are particularly bad- they all go to women in soft nebulous quirky industries like motivational speaking, cow cuddling, environmental activism and social media management. Most of these businesses have never made money, fail and pop up again with shiny new logos.

I can think of 5 women in my town who own and run multi million dollar companies in mining equipment servicing, fisheries, farming and construction who wouldn’t be invited to these self congratulatory back slapping schmooze fests in a million years. The businesses these women own pump millions into the economy and employ hundreds of people. But no awards wankfests for these women.

So I can’t say I’m impressed with PB’s occasional awards and Schrödinger’s professorship.

No evidence of that.

But if you have time go to Nick Wallis’s threadunroll summaries

https://threadreaderapp.com/user/nickwallis

or have a run through the previous thread.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4991660-sara-morrison-vs-belfast-film-festival?page=1

This case is either a significant win or a great case to appeal and focuses on free speech & saying true things out loud. It’s not a changing room / toilet case.

It’s exactly the fact everyone in the BFF wants love and kindness and co-creation - except for sex realists. They deserve to be turfed out.

Ok, I did some Internet sleuthing.

The Way back machine has a snapshot of the Re3 website from January this year:
web.archive.org/web/20231130214830/re3group.com/index.php

Website no longer exists but the Way back machine has crawled the whole site, so you can click through to see the news and press part, which includes attending award nights etc.

I also found the company filing history for Re3 on Companies house:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/NI044063/filing-history

The change in details for October 2010 is ... interesting. It was also apparently a subsidiary of a company in RoI.

I'm not really any the wiser about what is going on, but it's quite odd.

Looks like the great expunging may be more related to closing down Re3 than this tribunal tbh!

BBC Newsline tonight.

Presenter is Lynsey who was in Tribunal for first half of week. Bernie is news reporter who has been in court yesterday and today.

Starts around 4 mins 20.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002m7pw

So going by the Companies House filings it looks like professor is her middle name rather than a title?😁

@NoBinturongsHereMate:wrote

• Never heard of visiting professorships using people who have only industry experience without the academic background, but it may happen in specific fields.

I used to work in a uni department, and there were a few that I knew of who had a first degree, plus industry experience, but no further academic endeavours. They were kept on a short leash, to be fair. So it's possible, but far from common IME.