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!

You know, the more I ponder about Judge Sturgeon, the more I am unhappy about her haste to close down matters on Friday. All very nothing to see here.

She really didn't want to look under the stone did she? Supported by the ranty local lawyer for the Respondents. She thinks she's a big fish, but she swims in a small pond compared to the likes of Naomi Cunningham.

It will come back to bite her I'm sure.

Big fish, meet great white shark. Crunch, lunch is served... or so I hope because her manners were appalling.

The President and Vice President of Tribunals will also sit as judges, though not as often.

But yeah, it's a small world, and if you're a specialist employment lawyer, you will see the same faces most weeks.

I'm shocked that the number of lay members has got so low. It used to be multiples of what it is now. I assume it's a smaller number doing more hearings - it used to be that a PM might only get a couple of hearings a year - but a biggish pool of lay members should be a hedge against bias.

Absolutely.

I think you need some sort of overarching oversight here.

The judge behaved very very oddly yesterday and quite openly slagged off the C team, and allowed the R legal team to be rude and sneering and dismissive.

The judge made pronouncements that turned out not to be true.

The judge has agreed for DB to be excused due to her health and has not investigated, acknowledged or been asked to refute the allegations of TRA social media posts or involvement. The judge appears to have agreed on and colluded with an explanation for DB halting proceedings that is raising eyebrows among those present as thin/fudgy at best and disingenuous at worst.

The concerns re integrity and bias were so significant that journalists felt moved to raise them mid proceedings. These are not work experience students and these are not trivial allegations. This is highly irregular conduct.

Those concerns re integrity (more than bias) have absolutely snowballed and look to have ripple effects reaching a very very long way beyond this case.

It seems frankly mad that they could all turn up on Monday and just return to MD testimony as if nothing ever happened.

Belfast seems to have twinned itself with Royston Vasey.

Report was written in ~2010 , when she was about 50(?) so she could have got have got the mystery professorship any time up to then.

😁

If this brought to EJ Sturgeons attention and she doesn’t act it calls into question her integrity and independence.

Having people misrepresenting themselves on your panel is one thing. Becoming aware and not acting is another.

For me it’s as simple as Deborah’s own website for a company she was CEO of (and it cross references to her Facebook and LinkedIn profiles) on way back machine says:

Professor Deborah Boyd
Chief Executive Officer

A co-founder, director and shareholder of the Re3 Group, Professor Deborah Boyd is an expert in waste management technologies and implementation. Professor Boyd is also a visiting professor at the University of Ulster, and Environmental Tutor at Queens University of Belfast and has been a member of several public body advisory panels and was a founding member of the IBEC/CBI Joint Council.'

• Her own evidence says she was a visiting professor.
• Her own LinkedIn profile says she only has O-levels.

So why are a room full of people sitting in an Industrial Tribunal staring at a sign saying Professor Deborah Boyd?

Someone up thread said she was recorded as Prof at time of appointment. But I don’t have the receipts to verify.

This

Is it a quirk of LinkedIn or would she have had to type GCSE O levels? Because the GCSE shouldn't be there, it should just be O levels. GCSE didn't come in until 1988.

And is she still CEO of Re3 group? Or is that because she has never gone back and updated her info?

ETA: And director of would you like? 24 years and counting

Yes and her response to the allegations about her own conduct were very short and I'm not sure that they fully addressed the issues raised.

Refusing to even look into such serious matters as brought before her about DB rdoes not look good at all.

Having seen NW's blog today with the photos attached I think I owe @anyolddinosaur an apology as I thought Zoe Boyd the makeup artist and Zoe Boyd the marketing manager for Re3 were two different people. However, one of the pride pictures NW found on DB's media has the self-identifying Prof standing in front of an advertising screen for Zoe Boyd the make up artist who is presumably therefore her daughter. Given how wiffly waffly Re 3 seems to be it stands to reason she can have a full time business and still be their marketing manager. This is interesting as Zoe the makeup artist has a partner who is almost certainly non-binary and probably a TiF. Suggests that DB has almost as strong a reason to drink the cool aid as JR.

I would hazard a guess that mix of CSEs and O levels if being pedantic based on the school/college.

As some may remember, O levels were properly called "GCE O Levels". General Certificate of Education at the Ordinary Level. Contrast to the CSE, (Certificate of Secondary Education) and the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (A-level).

Both the General Certificate of Education Ordinary level (GCE O level) and Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) were replaced by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) with a lot of fanfare.

So maybe a typo for GCE O-level.

🥲🥰 been on mumsnet, got the certificate! Thank you.

Re Companies House. It’s a bit of a pain to do with the photo and scanning your passport chip. All your details including picture come up from scanning your phone over the chip in the front cover, when you are on their app. You have to take a photo of your details inside too. Then you have to take a photo there and then to confirm it’s the same person. Don’t know why anyone is worried about identity cards - it’s just more of the same.

You are right. I think that would make the HoP report from 2004 the earliest dated primary sources that names her Professor.

House of Commons - Northern Ireland Affairs - Sixth Report share.google/ZbvYJ1TxUDsuZVsaC

And yet here she is in a newspaper article in 2010. No mention of being a Professor.

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/the-golden-girls/28534941.html

Schrödingers Professor

On the EJ on Friday - I was there and she was very angry. Sure it wasn’t great the barristers weren’t there and it was for good cause.

But it was the othering:

• Thats not the way we do things here.
• How dare they come here and behave like this
• The ‘complete lack of courtesy and disrespect which has been shown’
• Points out that Michele Devlin is still under oath and has been since Wednesday.
• Makes it clear whether MD has finished her evidence or not she will be released from oath for the weekend.

The local team all agreed it was shocking. But what was shocking is a recusal application was made and there was a complete failure to address the substance of the actual
bias.

Instead off slinks Prof.

Thats not addressing it EJ Sturgeon. And it’s your panel that has the false statement on the glass. Your panel member that is misleading the Court.

If they were from ‘here’ we wouldn’t be here now. Fair play Naomi & Charlotte.

I think RE3 is gone - website is away and there’s not much to find. So not doing two jobs.

This is the thing - for a professor there’s not a lot of online presence. That’s what Naomi saw. Except she’s not a professor at all is she? For a business person with a lot of dissolved companies and who does Tribunals on the side and has done for 30 years she has the right amount of online presence.

I’d love to have it confirmed ✅.

Well in her attempt to address the matter - she sought recusal of the whole panel.

She now has an angry Judge and the Union guy, whose Union is fully Trans.

If the Panel has someone seated who was making fraudulent representations- then it goes to the integrity of the entire Panel and indeed cases that ‘Prof’ sat on.

Sturgeon has to recuse the whole panel of her own volition to show she has integrity.

Extraordinary 'CV' for a 'professor'!

Not only not a professor but no mention of completing any post 16 education. DB was a receptionist who after a few weeks in role presented a '4 page' proposal which transformed the company. A sector where she had no prior experience and no expert understanding.

1990 she's a lay member of the ET.

2004 she's a Professor advising the UK govt.

Lol. Embodiment of chutzpah.

Yeah, there's just no way.

She can't realistically be a Visiting Professor for University of Ulster in c 2016 whilst also having been a Professor in 2004 when she has made clear in press article in 2010 that she has no further academic qualifications than O Levels.

Nope.