Stirling University commits fraud - details

As described in an earlier post, Stirling Uni committed fraud to pervert the course of justice by inventing a fake investigation for the grievance process that was supposed to handle my grievance against Kathy McCabe. It was obvious all along that there couldn't possibly have been a proper investigation, because I had written six pages of factual allegations against Kathy, and had included ample documentary evidence to support those allegations.

In their response to my claim to the Employment Tribunal, Stirling Uni claimed that my allegations had been investigated and rejected.. So I asked them to provide the details of that investigation, including the form the investigation took, the findings, and the conclusion for each allegation.

Stirling Uni strongly objected to having to provide the details, but if a genuine investigation had taken place, then they would surely already have the details recorded. After five months, they eventually agreed to supply the details. If the information already existed, it shouldn't have taken any more than an hour to create the document, but it took them several weeks to produce them. That was because they were having to invent an investigation.

The document they produced contains ten pages of small font text. None of it is referred to in Eileen Schofield's report that she produced when announcing her decision in March 2010. Why would she carry out all of this investigation, and not refer to it in order to justify her decision? The answer is that there was no investigation, and the document is a fraud, and it describes a fake investigation that was invented for the purposes of the tribunal.

Firstly, the document was produced, not by Eileen Schofield, but by Karen Stark, yet it attempts to describe how Eileen came to her decision for each allegation, but as we are about to see, that is impossible.

Here is a brief excerpt from the first page of that document.

This refers to the first allegation in my grievance, which was that Kathy allowed my colleagues to abuse me, and took no action to stop it. The example I gave was of Jackie O'Neil coming into my office demanding that I fix an error in the database. I looked at the problem, and I could see straight away (just as she should have) that the problem wasn't with the database, but with what she was attempting to do to the database. I offered her three methods to solve her problem, but she just shouted at me, slammed my door, went back to her office that she shared with several other programmers in a rage, phoned the software suppliers, and angrily described me as "our useless DBA".

I informed Kathy of this, but she just said "I'm not interested". In the presence of several witnesses, including Karen Stark, she confirmed that she told me that she wasn't interested.

So my allegation, which was against Kathy McCabe, didn't require Jackie O'Neil to be interviewed. They only interviewed her to cause trouble between us. Kathy McCabe was not even asked to respond to my allegation, so it is unclear how Eileen could possibly come to any conclusion about it. This excerpt is the university's attempt to describe that investigation.

The document states that this allegation was investigated between 5 - 24 March 2010. That is impossible. It's a lie.

It says that Karen and Eileen referred to statements made by Jackie O'Neil and Bruce Flockhart. Again, that is impossible.

It states that Jackie could not recall the incident, when in fact Jackie had stated that the allegation was absolutely untrue.

It then states that Bruce Flockhart recalled the incident. However, Bruce was not asked about this incident, and his statement does not refer to it. The only question that Bruce had been asked was why he left the university (which was completely irrelevant to the grievance process). So there was no reason for them to refer to his statement about this allegation. It's a lie.

It then states that (presumably due to Bruce's evidence on this issue - which he didn't give), my allegation (which was against Kathy McCabe) was upheld, but for some reason, it was considered not to be material.

Now obviously, this is a pile of shite, but this is genuinely how Stirling University claimed Eileen Schofield arrived at her decision by 24 March 2010. It's all lies!

Unknown to me, Bruce Flockhart emailed Karen Stark on 15 April 2010 (three weeks after Eileen Schofield produced her report). He said that he witnessed this incident. His description matches word for word what is included in the excerpt. It is simply impossible that Eileen Schofield could have come to the conclusion that the document says that she did on 24 March 2010.

So how can a document that purports to be the details of an investigation that took place between 5 - 24 March 2010 refer to a document that didn't exist until three weeks later, and how could that document have influenced Eileen Schofield's decision that she made before it existed?

At the tribunal, Karen Stark took full responsibility for this, and said that it was a mistake. She said that she was looking through the evidence and she saw Bruce's email attached to his original statement. But why would Karen be rummaging through statements in April 2011, a year after the decision had been made by Eileen Schofield? If the decision was made by Eileen, then surely Eileen should have completed the document and described how she arrived at her decision. How can Karen describe how Eileen came to her decision by rummaging through old statements?

So what was the mistake?

Well it's simply not a mistake. It's fraud. This was Karen's attempt to describe an investigation that didn't take place, but that was to justify a decision that wasn't based on evidence at all, but just a cover up. I'm not even sure who made the decision; Eileen, Karen or someone else?

The claim that this is simply a mistake is ridiculous. It would have to be a series of incredible mistakes. Lets examine the scenario.

1. Karen Stark decides to rummage through statements in April 2011 instead of simply asking Eileen Schofield how she reached her decision.
2. If this "investigation" had taken place, Eileen would already have those decisions. Otherwise there would have been no point in the investigation. Or are we supposed to believe that they had the investigation, but that Eileen didn't record her decisions on what they were investigating?
3. Karen reads Bruce's email and says that Eileen used it to come to her decision.
4. She says that Eileen decided to uphold my allegation, and that can only be based on Bruce's email.
5. It can't be a mistake because it describes a decision process. A decision that, if we are to believe Karen, could only have been made by Karen herself.
6. Karen says that the outcome was also recorded incorrectly, and that it should have read "Allegation not upheld" instead of "Allegation upheld - but considered not to be material". That would have to be the most astonishing typing error I've ever heard of. But it's not. It's a decision that could only have been made, if we are to believe Karen, by Karen herself. How could Karen possibly decide whether an allegation was material or not without referring to Eileen? 
7. If an allegation had been considered "not material" then what would have been the point in investigating it? You would simply say "Not investigated because not considered material".
8. How can this ten page document include a conclusion for each allegation without Karen having referred to Eileen?
9. Why is it not material? If it was not material to me, I wouldn't have included it in my grievance.
10. It is a manager's role to ensure that their staff conduct themselves in a professional manner. Yet Kathy openly and proudly admitted to telling me that she wasn't interested. However, she was very interested in any gossip she heard about me, and would criticise me, including formal criticism in my appraisal report, based on gossip she told me she overheard in the corridor, without even telling what it was that she had heard.
11. There was no valid reason to interview Jackie about this. Jackie should have been spoken to by her manager at the time of the incident, which was more than three years old.

The grievance process was a complete sham, but the attempt to cover up that sham is a fraud. Gerry McCormac was in charge of Stirling University at the time the fraud took place, and therefore he is responsible for it.

Should bullies fear for their lives?

When bullies like Kathy McCabe do their bullying, do they ever consider what it may eventually lead to?

Some targets of bullying commit suicide. I attempted suicide in February 2012. Some targets of bullying take revenge on the bully and either seriously injure or kill them, and people close to them. I can fully understand why they do it. It may possibly be a natural instinct.

I have detested violence all of my life. I've been vegetarian for twenty five years because I don't like the thought of animals being killed. I have always gone about my life lawfully and always respected other people's rights. My natural instinct has been to help others rather than hurt them. I have always opposed the death penalty too, not just because of possible miscarriages of justice, but because I think it's barbaric.  But for a very long time now, I have been imagining myself killing various people. These involuntary thoughts come into my head almost from the moment I wake each morning, and they are with me countless times a day. I'm not hearing voices that are telling me to kill, but I constantly visualise myself doing it. This must happen to other targets of bullying, and obviously some go on to carry out the killings.

Bullying should definitely be taken seriously. It should be considered a criminal offence in certain cases, and covering up for a bully should definitely be a criminal offence. I feel sure that that will eventually be the case, but sadly it is unlikely to happen in my life time. To carry out sham investigations into bullying is sub-human.

Bullying is a form of torture. The bully gains sadistic pleasure from watching their target suffer. Kathy McCabe and her husband, Liam probably earn in excess of £160,000 a year. Most people would love to be in that position heading towards retirement. It wasn't enough for Kathy though. No amount of money could give her the thrill she receives from bullying. It's the abuse of power over someone less powerful. Big kids bully little kids at school, and powerful managers bully their powerless subordinates at work.

Some people can handle power appropriately. Lots of big kids are not interested in bullying little kids. But Kathy's only consideration was how to abuse her power. She was like a kid in a sweet shop, and her managers just let her do as she pleased, and they even lied to cover up for her.

No amount of warning would encourage Kathy to stop bullying. Whenever I confronted her about it, she would try to dismiss it by saying things like "Don't harp back to the past; look to the future." So I was supposed to keep wiping the slate clean, only to find that she would continue where she left off. She couldn't keep to any agreements she made.

The "mind reader" email to the team was the last straw. I had taken unfair treatment, dishonesty and constant unjust criticism from her for years, and I could take no more, and that email proved that she got pleasure from doing it. I suspect that originally her criticism had been based on false stories she was being told by the likes of Eileen MacDonald and Jackie O'Neil, but she had moved on from that and had begun to make up her own false stories. That had been evident a year earlier when we had meetings that were supposed to resolve the problem. Kathy used the meetings to launch a tirade of fake complaints about me so that she could avoid having to talk about the real problem.

That's the bizarre thing. She was obviously very uncomfortable being confronted with her bullying behaviour, but no matter how uncomfortable she felt, it didn't stop her from doing it. She has a self destruct button that she can't stop pushing. The thrill she receives from bullying far outweighs the discomfort of being found out.

And management still covered up for her, making it obvious that they are corrupt. How sick is that? A very large number of people were prepared to corrupt themselves to protect a serial, long term bully. If they had dealt with Kathy in the correct manner, I wouldn't be having these thoughts of killing people.

The people who covered up for Kathy and unfairly dismissed me are all supposed to be intelligent people with university degrees. But really, they are just criminals; pure and simple. They know that they've done wrong. Their crimes were premeditated. They were caught red handed, but they have escaped punishment.

Although I am strongly opposed to violence and killings, I am also strongly in favour of law and justice. Without justice, society is broken, and it is everyone for themselves. Stirling University has created a pressure pot. When crimes go unpunished, violence will inevitably increase.

When I read of targets of bullying who kill themselves, it saddens me because that's when the bully receives maximum pleasure; yet society continues to allow it to happen. Suicide has to be the ultimate goal for the bully. Knowing they have the power to make targets kill themselves must make them cum in their underpants. Some bullies continue to bully after their victim is dead. by celebrating their death on the internet. I have no doubt that Kathy would have been wishing that my suicide attempt had been successful. That's one of the things that keeps me going just now. Kathy shouldn't be rewarded by seeing me dead. That would just encourage more bullying. On the other hand, I have no great desire to live. That's the dilemma! And it's a dilemma that I expect others have faced before me.

When I read of targets of bullying that kill their tormentors, I am left with mixed emotions. A life has been lost, and I would much prefer that to be avoided. However, it does send out a message to other bullies that bullying is not a risk free hobby. I suppose it's like reading about people who are killed because they were speaking on their mobile phone when they crashed their car. Sadly, someone has lost their life, and a family has lost a member, but hopefully we learn from it and reduce the possibility of it happening to others.

So, in answer to the question "Should bullies fear for their lives?", the answer is an emphatic "Yes!"

Just as we've had government funded advertising campaigns aimed to make people fear being killed by smoking, drink driving or unprotected sex, it would be no bad thing for bullies to be made aware of the danger in which they place themselves, and those close to them. Surely that would discourage bullying, just as it has discouraged smoking.

Obviously, it's not enough to tell a bully that it makes the target feel bad. That's why they do it. They need to be aware that it can and does lead to targets losing control and taking revenge on the bullies. And because they may feel they have nothing to lose, that revenge could take any form imaginable, or even unimaginable

We only learn of bullies being killed by their targets when it is obvious, and often the target takes their own life at the same time they kill the bully. Who knows how many unsolved murders may have been carried out by someone the dead person bullied in their distant past, and with whom they no longer had any connection. The bully may have long forgotten their target, but memories of bullying can live with the target for a very long time, and every day of their life. They may feel that the only way they can ever get the memories of bullying out of their minds, is to kill the bullies and those that allowed it to happen. I know for sure that I will never be able to forget what has happened to me. I certainly don't want to have to kill anyone, but that would be true too of just about every victim of bullying who went on to kill. We just want the bullying to stop, and the memories to leave us.

The target may even decide not to kill the bully, but to punish them in a way that will allow them to watch the bully suffer, just as the bully took pleasure in watching the target suffer.

Ironically, it may only be after I'm dead that a proper investigation will be carried out into what has gone on at Stirling University. and why all of the obvious evidence was simply ignored and covered up. The buck stops with Gerry McCormac and Christine Hallett, but astonishingly there was no shortage of employees eager to put the boot in.

When you take everything from a man, including his dignity, his job, his ability to make a living, it means that he has nothing to lose, whatever he chooses to do.

When you lie to cover up for a bully, you could place the bully in far greater danger than they would have faced had you told the truth, and you could place yourself and your family in danger too.

Kathy McCabe in fear for her life

At the tribunal hearing, Kathy referred to this blog, and in particular to the post called "Kathy McCabe - Silent Witness". I wrote it at the time when Stirling University strongly objected to me calling Kathy as a witness to the hearing.

According to Kathy, she takes this to represent a death threat. She said that there is a TV programme called "Silent Witness" where the witness is dead, and therefore silent.

As well as being a proven habitual liar, Kathy is a bit of a drama queen.

Now, I ask you! If you were living in fear that I planned to kill you, why on earth would you continue to work five days a week in a public building within walking distance of my home?

To add to her very dubious testimony, she proudly announced in response to a different question, that she operates an open door policy. I think if I was a woman in her position in fear that a man was planning to kill me, my door would not only be closed; it would be locked, and it would be in a different country, and not have my name on it.

You really ought to give up lying, Kathy. You are hopeless at it. It's not just a case of saying your lies, you have got to remember them and live them too. They have to be consistent with everything else you say and do, and they have to be consistent with evidence that exists and what witnesses have seen.

Like when you sent the whole team that email to publicly humiliate me and claim that I was a liar and that neither that year, nor any previous year, had I ever asked to attend a conference, and therefore you couldn't have rejected a non request because you are not a mind reader, and all the rest of your fucking shit. Before you came out with all of that shit, didn't you even bother to think that I might still have the written requests going back several years? Didn't you consider that I might still have your acknowledgements to those requests? Didn't you think about how I had already referred to the corrupt manner in which you handle conference attendance in my informal grievance to Peter Kemp? Didn't you think about how we had discussed it at my appraisal and that it was recorded in the appraisal report too? Didn't you think about how you had told Karen Eccleson to keep quiet about it when she asked you why you wouldn't allow me to attend? Did you give any thought at all to what Karen would think when she received your email? Did you imagine I would encourage further bullying by not responding to your email? And why were you so fucking desperate to keep me away from conferences anyway?

Just who the fuck did you think you are writing that shit about me and making it public to try to make a fool of me? And this was after you had agreed to comply with Mark Toole's instruction that criticism should be delivered privately and be evidence based. Most managers, in fact most normal people already know that without having to be told, but Mark Toole had to give you a special instruction, and you still couldn't follow it. Lynn McDonald heard you agree to comply, remember? You are out of fucking control. A complete nut job that will never fucking learn.

I would love to know how you explained this away to the rest of the team. Did you just keep quiet about it, and hope that nobody asked? You sneekily sent me a meeting request to discuss the matter. You made your email public on your Outlook Calendar, and you deliberately worded it in a way that could have been construed that my requests to attend conference had been made inappropriately. You are utterly pathetic! How did it feel to know that it was now obvious to everyone in the team that you are a barking mad liar?

I offered you an opportunity to apologise. Apparently you saw no reason to apologise. You had just called me a liar and humiliated me to every one of my 16 colleagues, but you didn't think an apology was in order. The opportunity to apologise no longer exists. You might regret it, but it's too late for sorry.

Did you seriously think that I was the only one in the team that knew about your lying habit, and all your other dishonest habits?

When you announced during that meeting with Mark Toole, Karen Stark, Dave Edgar and Lynn McDonald that you are well liked by the team, did you really believe it? There are several team members who had openly stated how they despised you. Eric Hall, for example, who you think likes you, openly stated that he "hates the fucking bitch" when referring to you.

I was once alone in the tea room with Jaana who was extremely angry with you, and told me she "fucking hates" you too. Then, literally a split second later, you walked into the room, and she became all nice and pleasant and chatty with you. Karen doesn't like you, even before the conference matter and the voluntary severance matter, she knew you were a liar and couldn't be trusted. Even Deana told me she doesn't like you. David Black knows you are a nut job too, but pretends to like you to your face, because he's frightened of you. Lynn McDonald also spoke of your devious ways. Dave Farley doesn't like you.  Jacqueline Borthwick didn't like you. John McDonald didn't like you. You also read what Bruce Flockhart wrote about you, and Marco couldn't stand you. You also read what Gordon and John wrote about you. They certainly didn't like you. Kevin Woolley strongly disliked you too. He calls you "macho woman". You know that Deana, Jackie and Karen felt the need to talk to you about your dodgy recruitment habits, and you know that Jackie was far from impressed when you told her not to send any emails before you checked them first. And now you know that Peter Kemp was having to lie to cover up for your bullying behaviour. Imagine, senior management having to invent stories to cover up for you, yet he didn't even tell you.

And you know from feedback you received from Jaana, Deana, Eric and Paul that they were far from impressed with you as a manager. Eric said it was by far the worst feedback any manager had ever received on that training course. I can't imagine why this would lead you to believe that they liked you. They were not impressed either when you took them aside and explained to them that they had given the wrong feedback. Deana said she felt intimidated by you.

Then there was that team meeting you held when you acted like a complete nut and seemed to imagine that the team was attacking you, and you got all defensive and attacked back. After that meeting, the first person to criticise you was your best buddy, Eileen MacDonald. There was even talk of us all going along to HR to complain about you. Jaana did complain to HR about you after she had a meeting with you that left her crying uncontrollably, which in turn, upset the whole team.

So if you seriously thought that the team liked you, then you are also delusional. No doubt some team members are grateful for your special, discriminatory favours. For example, Suzie, Eileen Mac and Selina, but if you have to buy people's affection, then they are not really friends, are they?

Ironically, the only person I can actually recall saying they liked you, was me. That was before I knew what you were up to. I was so busy with my enormous workload that I didn't realise what was going on. It was when my colleagues told me that you had created a new post in order to promote Eileen MacDonald, and then it actually happened that I realised how bent you are. Marco had worked his arse off for you, but you wouldn't promote him. Bruce also got through tons of work, but you wouldn't promote him or even give him a permanent contract. Having Eileen in the team was worse than being a man short. She was a drain on resources. I constantly had to do her work for her, and explain things to her over and over and over. But you actually fucking promoted her.

Ask yourself why anyone would like you. You are a bully and a cheat and a liar. And you're constantly having to cover up your lies with brand new lies that are just as bad or worse than the original lies that you were trying to cover up. You fucking lied on oath about the vouchers too, even though it was obvious you would be caught out because it didn't just involve me; it involved David Black too. I bet you even lied to Deana and Stephen about the vouchers at the time. And you fucking lied again about the conference to try to cover up all your other lies about the conference. This time you claimed you didn't send me because the conference was about matters that were of no interest to the university. Did you not realise that the conference agenda is stored on line, Kathy?

When you have team meetings, how do you expect anyone to believe a word you say? They are probably constantly trying to work out the motive behind any decisions you make, because they are rarely honest.

And if you really think you are liked and well thought of by the team, why did you always avoid anonymous feedback? Is it maybe because you shit yourself when you saw the anonymous feedback from Jaana, Deana, Eric and Paul? They sort of lost their anonymity when all four individually gave terrible feedback. Eric admitted in court that he said that on the second time around, he had given better feedback than you deserved, just for a quiet life.

Remember saying this to the team?  "I would like your feedback on my new appraisal system. We could do this anonymously, but I'm sure that my team doesn't have a problem saying openly what they think."

What you really meant was "We could do this anonymously, but I'd rather not have the truth. So if you say anything bad, I will know who you are."

Well, I can tell you for a fact that although the feedback I gave was completely honest, there were at least two  people whose feedback was dishonest, because they had told me exactly what they thought of it. They were Dave Farley and David Black, but I doubt if they were alone in just wanting a quiet life.

You even complained in your grievance or something else that I had given poor feedback. So basically you complained because I didn't lie. You complained because you had an honest employee. Do you see the irony, Kathy? You manipulate feedback by intimidation. Is that what they taught you on that expensive training course you were on? That was money well spent, wasn't it?

"We could do this anonymously, but then I wouldn't know who to bully and raise a grievance against."

Eric was correct!

As regards planning to kill anyone; you bullied me for several years despite several requests for you to stop. That bullying has led to me being dismissed unfairly from the job I had worked extremely hard for, including six years that I worked an extra 15 hours a week. My mental health has been severely damaged. My prospects of ever finding work are minimal, and my life has been ruined. You have gone completely unpunished despite lying at your grievance hearing and perjuring yourself at the tribunal hearing, and fooling nobody.

Why would I be planning to kill someone, and why do you think it should be you?

Killing someone would be nothing compared with what I've already done. I've folded my arms during a team meeting, for heaven's sake! Well, at least you said I did. Was that a lie too, Kathy?

You are a nut job, Kathy. You know it; the team knows it; even Suzie and Eileen know it; management knows it; other universities know it; Liam knows it; your children know it, Colin Sinclair knows it; your Facebook friends and your neighbours know it. There will be very few people at Stirling University that don't know it. When the new developers start, they will know it. When you went to the police, I bet they knew it too.

If you didn't want people to know you are a nut job, then you should have done your job properly. God knows, you were warned often enough. You were given a fantastic opportunity. but whenever a chance came your way, you cheated and discriminated and bullied. You should never be in a job managing people. You cannot manage people. To make matters worse, you kept recruiting unmanageable people.

If you are embarrassed by me telling the world about your ludicrous behaviour, then you have yourself and Martin McCrindle to thank for that. I warned him that my dismissal would result in embarrassment to Stirling University and many of its employees. He knew that I had the evidence to prove what I say, but he was desperate to get rid of a whistleblower, regardless of your embarrassment and that of Una, Jackie, Eileen, Selina, Mark, Karen, himself, etc.

This matter may attract a lot more publicity in the future. I would love it if the TV channels take up the story. I don't think you'd be as keen though. You might be asked some seriously difficult questions, and we both know how much you hate that.

You are not in any position to complain about my blog. It was you that wanted to go public, remember. And, unlike you, I only tell the truth. However, if you think I've lied in my blog about you, then you could take legal action. Go on, I dare you. Think of the publicity you'd get. Why not create your own blog to deny my allegations. Go on, call me a liar again in public. I dare you.

When I raised the matter of your dishonesty during mediation, you should have thanked me. I'm sure dozens of other people have listened to your lies and just let you make a fool of yourself without bringing it to your attention. I certainly don't think it was helpful for you that Colin Sinclair was prepared to lie for you. He would have been a far better friend if he had told you that you are dishonest, and that you should cut it out because folk are not stupid. They know that you are very dishonest. You have no credibility.

News reports: Shooter near Empire State Building was a laid-off worker seeking revenge

by David Yamada

At least nine people have been wounded and two are dead following a shooting this morning near the Empire State Building in Manhattan. One of the dead is the gunman, who was shot by police.

Early news reports at least raised the spectre of terrorism. One analyst even discussed the possibility that terrorists might stage a test run of sorts to see how law enforcement authorities would react to shootings in crowded midtown Manhattan. I suppose that in view of the memories of 9/11 seared onto New York’s consciousness, such speculation is natural.

But no, for better or worse, it apparently had nothing to do with terrorism. The shooter was a 53-year-old man who was laid off from his job, and his target was his former boss. Here’s a summary of news reports from Jason Sickles of Yahoo! News (link here):

The shooting occurred at 9:03 a.m. ET at Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. The fatal incident was the act of a disgruntled former employee. The gunman, a 53 year-old women’s accessories designer named Jeffrey Johnson, was fired from his job during a corporate downsizing at Hazan Imports and returned to his office Friday morning to target his 41 year-old boss.

The shooter followed his coworker down 33rd Street, and shot him outside of Legend’s Bar, according to the New York Post. It is unclear if he fired into a crowd of pedestrians outside of the Empire State Building, or if pedestrians were caught in crossfire, reported the New York Daily News.

Frightening sign of the times?
Obviously we know way too little to make definitive assessments about what drove this man to do what he did. However, while conceding the likelihood of some pre-existing mental instability or illness, I’m willing to suggest that what pushed him over the edge had something to do with the desperation, fear, and anger that can accompany losing one’s job at middle age. I’m not making excuses for such a terrible act of violence, only offering a possible explanation.

Perhaps I’m guilty of speculatively filling in the gaps, but once I read some of these details, I had a sinking feeling that this is a sign of sad and desperate times.

Karen Stark - Evil Psychopath

One interesting feature of the bullying and corruption at Stirling University is the pure evil methods employed by Human Resources Partner, Karen Stark in order to protect Kathy McCabe, the long term bully and sex discriminator.

I've seen Karen, who lives about half a mile from me at 24 Chisholm Avenue, Stirling, FK9 5QT, shopping in a supermarket. I've seen her drive a car, and I've seen her walk along the road just as though she was a perfectly normal person, but she's far from normal. She is an evil psychopath.

Some psychopaths can cover up their evil actions with the use of their intelligence, but Karen hasn't been blessed with intelligence either. She does evil things and either thinks she will never be found out because she believes she is intelligent, or she really doesn't care.

Why would someone who is evil be drawn to work in Human Resources? I am 55 years old, and I honestly believed that the purpose of HR, aka Personnel, was to provide help and support for the staff. I was incredibly nieve. Apparently HR is there to support management. And because Stirling University's management is corrupt, HR is also corrupt.

Maybe Karen was normal before she joined Stirling Uni; I don't know, but it appears to be part of her work that she relishes. Normal people would complain if they were required to act dishonestly at work. Not Karen; she seems to love that part of her work, and maybe she hopes that by being so evil, it will improve her prospects of promotion over colleagues who may be more hesitant when it comes to being downright evil.

I had known all along that Karen, along with Directors Peter Kemp and Mark Toole, was covering up for Kathy McCabe's behaviour. That's why I wrote to the Principal, Christine Hallett about it. Unfortunately the Principal was also corrupt, and was replaced by another, Gerry McCormac who is equally corrupt. It must be part of the job description.

In the past, corrupt and evil people could continue their devious actions without the public knowing. Now we live in the information age, and they can no longer do that. The public, their friends and their family can see how evil and corrupt they really are. I think blogs like this will act as a deterrent to future corrupt practices, but it won't completely eliminate them. For example,I had already published my blog before Stirling University decided to produce a fraudulent document for the Employment Tribunal to pervert the course of justice. Blogs like this will not deter the stupid who think they can break the law without being detected. Karen Stark thought she was clever enough to pull it off, yet it wouldn't have fooled a blind man on a galloping horse.

But there's much more evil that Karen has done, and I'm sure I know only a tiny fraction of it. What I wonder is if she cares about being found out at all, or if she simply eliminated any thought from her mind that her evil acts will be discovered.

Soon after I blew the whistle on her to the corrupt Principal, Karen arranged a sham grievance process. Again, she must either think people are stupid and can't realise it's a sham or she doesn't care. Obviously her job is safe because she acted for a corrupt management that is desperate to protect Kathy McCabe whose husband, Liam is the Director of Finance.

So the sham grievance process meant that Kathy was safe from being fired or any disciplinary action whatsoever, but that wasn't enough for Karen. She saw what she thought was a golden opportunity to cause trouble for me. Eileen Schofield who was in charge of the grievance process decided to begin an investigation, or more accurately; a witch hunt. The investigation was to involve interviewing my colleagues. For some odd reason, the names of the colleagues to be interviewed had to have been mentioned in the grievance documents. At no stage was I asked to give names of witnesses, and Karen didn't tell me who would be interviewed. It was all part of a sham because I had provided ample documentary evidence of Kathy's bullying and sex discrimination.

One of the complaints in my grievance was how Kathy would permit my colleagues to be abusive towards me and take no action over it, yet she would raise issues about stupid things like me having my arms folded during a team meeting. Kathy had also become deranged.

When Karen wrote to me to say that they would be interviewing colleagues, I replied and reminded her that my grievance was against Kathy and not my colleagues. I warned her that the interviews could cause bad feelings between me and my colleagues. Karen said that they were required by the terms of the grievance process to thoroughly investigate the allegations. Note the word "thoroughly" which I will refer to later.

At the tribunal, a document was produced which showed who they planned to interview. When I wrote to Karen warning her of the possible bad feelings it would cause, there were no plans to interview Una Forsyth, Jackie O'Neil or Eileen MacDonald. Karen Stark had clearly arranged for those three colleagues to be interviewed after reading my concerns, with the sole purpose of causing trouble between us.

Unknown to me, Una Forsyth was interviewed. I didn't expect Una to be interviewed because I hadn't mentioned her name, but I hadn't realised that Kathy had lodged a document with Una's name on it. Una was asked about an incident three years earlier when she had assaulted me for some reason I will probably never know. Una immediately denies the assault despite the fact she did it in front of more than a dozen witnesses. She also adds the most incredible lies about how I was the only member of the team she doesn't get on with. This wasn't long after she had cooked food for me at home and brought it in to work. It was also not long after she had invited me to be her friend on Facebook. Una is another one who thinks that she can lie undetected, when in fact she really ought to have stuck to the truth. But she had been led to believe that I had complained about her, and Karen Stark was happy to allow her to believe that.

After her interview, Una's conscience got the better of her, and she imagined that I was gloating at her about her being interviewed by HR, when in fact I had no idea she had been interviewed. She took our colleague, Karen Eccleson with her to complain to Karen Stark about my "gloating". In court, Karen described Una as being upset. This was Karen doing her "I'm normal, I care about people" act. Of course, rather than do the normal, unevil thing and put Una's mind at rest by telling her that I hadn't complained about the assault, Karen sent Una home until she was less upset. And when Una was feeling better and wanted to return to work, again rather than tell Una the truth, Karen arranged for Una to work in a completely different part of the building, away from "nasty" Allan. The further she was from me, the less likely she would be to learn the truth.

Una fell for Karen's evil tricks, hook, line and sinker. The person who had needlessly got her involved in my grievance against Kathy was not nasty Allan at all, but the apparently kind, thoughtful, Florence Nightingale like, Karen Stark, and what's more, she did it against my expressed wishes, and to deliberately upset Una.

What about Karen's story? Karen said that she was required by the grievance process to investigate the allegations thoroughly. Remember that word, "thoroughly"? So if that was genuinely the reason for interviewing Una, then lets examine how thorough that investigation was.

Was I asked about it? No.

Was Kathy McCabe asked about it? No. Indeed Karen Stark was present when Kathy McCabe announced in front of several witnesses that she had known that Una had assaulted me. The other witnesses were Lynn McDonald, Mark Toole and Dave Edgar. Although all of their names appeared in the grievance documents, none of them were interviewed.

Was anybody who witnessed the assault asked about it? No. Even though Una confirmed that there were a large number of witnesses, this "thorough" investigation didn't even require the names of any those witnesses.

What useful purpose would there have been of investigating the assault? None. I had never made any complaint, and the incident was more than three years old.

So there was no investigation, thorough or otherwise, because no investigation was required. Una was interviewed solely to cause trouble between us.

I began to notice that Una was giving me the cold shoulder, or at least it appeared that way. I couldn't be sure because she has a hearing problem, and rather than just ignoring me, she might just not have heard me. But then she removed me as her friend from Facebook, so I knew that there must have been something wrong, but of course, I had no idea what. I asked David Black if he knew. He said he didn't know, but Una confirmed in court that he did know. He too was happy for Una to continue to be misled. I wrote to Una to try to find out what was wrong. I even told her that she had probably been misled about something. I know that I was constantly the subject of gossip and rumours by Eileen MacDonald and Jackie O'Neil. Una didn't reply, and instead went to complain to Karen Stark again; the very person who was deliberately misleading her. And again, Karen allowed Una to believe that I had made a complaint against her.

Una's "friends" rallied and encouraged her to make up false complaints about me. That's one of Una's biggest problems. She genuinely doesn't know who her real friends are.

And, of course, Karen and Mark Toole were eager to pretend to believe the false complaints, and they were eager to allow Una to continue to believe that I had complained about her. To remove any chance of Una finding out the truth, I was suspended from work by Mark Toole when he absolutely knew that I was completely innocent of the absurd allegations that had been made against me. He definitely knew because that's why he refused to carry out an investigation as he was legally obliged to, and why he simply ignored all the evidence that confirmed that the allegations were false.

Unknown to me, Karen had also received an email from Bruce Flockhart in which he confirms that Jackie O'Neil had phoned a software supplier and angrily made derogatory remarks about me. Karen kept quiet about that too, even though Jackie had denied it when Karen interviewed her. Jackie had also denied ever shouting at me, but Karen had seen emails about Jackie's most recent shouting incident just days earlier. Mark Toole was arranging a meeting with me and Jackie to discuss it, but Karen told Jackie not to attend.

Are you glad that the world now knows you are an evil psychopath, Karen Stark?

And what about you, Kathy McCabe? Are you happy now that it has required so much dishonesty and corruption to protect you from justice? Wouldn't it have been better for everybody concerned if you had paid attention to what I told you in the first place? You just wouldn't listen, would you? And you can't complain that I "expect you to be a mind reader", can you?

Selina Gibb - Make your own mind up

This is a link to the mp3 file (Selina and Una.mp3) that contains a conversation I had with Selina Gibb and Una Forsyth on 26 February 2010 immediately after my grievance hearing with Kathy McCabe. The transcript of the conversation is on my blog here.

Two months after this conversation took place, Selina was interviewed as part of the disciplinary investigation. She claimed that due to a private conversation she had with me in January that year, she was frightened, nervous and anxious around me. She had lied, claiming that I had gone wild with rage, and that I was red in the face and spitting on her desk.

The conversation begins as I'm about to go home early. Selina and Una Forsyth instigate the conversation by asking me why I'm going home. The both lied, claiming that neither of them got on with me. If I didn't get on with someone, I wouldn't talk to them as they are about to leave. I would just let them leave.

You will note that the volume of my voice lowers as I go over to them, and away from the exit. This was because we shared a room with about eleven colleagues. The private conversation I had with Selina in January 2010 also took place as I was about to leave the room, and again it was Selina who instigated it. However, that day I didn't move towards Selina because we were the only two people in the room at the time. So her claim that I was spitting on her desk in anger was false because I was nowhere near her desk. In fact, at one point, she had stood up from her desk to come over and stand beside me. She was giving the appearance of being genuinely concerned for my health. I now know that to be false.

 In this February conversation, just as in the January one, there is no sign of anger from me; no going wild; no spitting with rage. Yet we are discussing my grievance with Kathy McCabe which was the subject that Selina alleged caused me to go wild.

In this conversation, Una raises a work issue which I begin to answer, when Selina interrupts to make jokes about my 'dancing shoes'. Hardly the behaviour of someone who is anxious and nervous around me.

The reason the conversation is being recorded is because I had been recording the grievance hearing, and hadn't switched off my recorder.

Mark Toole, who dismissed me, says he believes Selina's unsubstantiated claims. Yet he criticised me because Ruth had sent him a letter in which she stated she had seen disciplinary investigator, Graham Millar, with his arm around Una Forsyth at works nights out. Mark says that Ruth's claims are unsubstantiated despite the fact that Graham did this in the presence of more than a dozen work colleagues, and on more than one occasion. He didn't even bother to ask Graham if it was true or not, such was his desire to substantiate Ruth's claims. Mark claims that Ruth made false claims in collusion with me because she was my partner, but he says he could not imagine that work colleagues would collude with each other.

Ruth's letter also stated that David Black had told her that Jackie O'Neil had shouted angrily at me just before I was suspended. Again, Mark says that he believed Ruth had made this up. David Black has confirmed it, though, so maybe Mark should have asked David before dismissing me. Isn't that what you would expect from someone who says they are going to carry out a thorough investigation? I had pleaded with him to speak to David, but my pleas were ignored. He obviously knew I was telling the truth. Why on earth would I lie about an incident that was witnessed by a dozen colleagues. Mark says he believed Jackie who denied shouting at me, even though she was unwilling to attend a meeting with me and Mark to discuss the incident. Despite knowing that I shared an office with 13 colleagues, Mark says he thought that only David and Jackie and I were present. That's why nobody else was asked about it, he said.

Does that sound genuine to you?

The Lies

Despite having a high level of intelligence, Kathy McCabe is a terrible and compulsive liar. She automatically lies under very little pressure. For example, rather than admit to making a mistake, she becomes defensive, and immediately lies to cover it up.

Kathy had arranged SQLServer training, from an external training company, for David Black and me. In court, she claimed that this was due to David and me having pressed her for this training because of the increasing number of SQLServer databases in the uni. That was the first lie, because she arranged it herself out of the blue. Indeed I doubt if David would have been aware of any such databases at that time.

David and I were to arrange when we were to attend the training. Shortly after Kathy told us about it, we learned that we had been downgraded by the role evaluation process. Then I went off work sick with stress for five weeks, and when I returned, I was still suffering from stress, and to attend training would have been pointless, as I wouldn't have been able to concentrate. I planned to wait until the stress had reduced before I attended the training.

Then in November 2008, Kathy informed David and me that the training vouchers she had bought for us were due to expire within a month. Neither of us could manage to attend within that time, so Kathy tried to give the vouchers to other team members for a different use, but in the end the vouchers expired before anyone could use them.

At her grievance interview, Kathy lied and said that she had told David and me several times that the vouchers had a deadline by which they had to be used, when in fact she hadn't told us about the existence of vouchers at all until a month before they were due to expire.

This was a lie that David didn't know Kathy had made up, so when I asked him about it at the tribunal hearing, he saw no reason not to tell the truth. I then showed him Kathy's statement from her grievance hearing. I suspect that if he'd known in advance that Kathy had lied, he would have covered for her. Later, Kathy repeated her lies under oath.


Peter Kemp, just as I strongly suspected, lied to me after I submitted a 25 page informal grievance against Kathy McCabe in which I give considerable detail about her behaviour.

In 2008, I wrote to him complaining that Kathy had written to the entire team to arrange for them to decide on an issue relating to database security which was my responsibility as Database Administrator. She did this to undermine me because Eileen MacDonald repeatedly refused to work within the agreed security procedures. Peter replied claiming that he had told Kathy to arrange this. At the hearing, Kathy confirmed that she did this on her own initiative.

Stirling University claims that they take complaints of bullying "extremely seriously". The should rewrite their documents to read "When you complain of bullying, senior management will lie to you in order to try to cover up the bullying. Then we will accuse you of being the bully before we sack you without any investigation."


As part of the role evaluation process, Kathy McCabe had to check and sign the role description for each role in her team. One of the roles, System Assistant, was occupied by three women. The description states that it takes five years to gain the Oracle skills required for the role. That is completely false, and represents serious fraud. I would estimate that it would take less than a month for an employee to gain the Oracle skills required for the work that they carry out. Indeed, as a student on my placement year, I had learned those skills to a much higher level within a month; as did the students before and after me. Kathy confirmed that, with no prior Oracle knowledge, she designed and wrote a full application within her first six months at the university. The Oracle skills for writing an application require far more than required by a System Assistant.

In addition, Selina Gibb had occupied the role for more than five years with absolutely no Oracle skills. So on that basis, every employee at the university could legitimately claim that it takes five years to gain the Oracle skills required for their role; including Gardeners, Cleaners, and the Principal.

One of Mark Toole's alleged reasons for dismissing me was that I didn't agree with the university's database security policy. This was another extraordinary reason, because I definitely agreed with the university's database policy; indeed it was me who introduced it, in my capacity of Database Administrator. However, according to Mark, I didn't even know what the security policy was. Apparently he knows of a policy that existed before he joined the university that gave permission for all and sundry to connect to databases as the base table owner, despite the only policy that I was aware of, and the one that I was required to confirm to external auditors that we were working to. It would appear that Mark expected me to lie to the auditors by confirming that the university was complying with the real policy while, in reality, we were complying with his imaginary policy.

Mark Toole, just like his predecessor, Peter Kemp, is full of shit. Lying comes too easily him, and that's how he has ended up with himself in knots. It appears that he now agrees with the security policy I introduced, because employees no longer have access to the passwords for base table owners, and they haven't had access to them since before I was sacked. So if my policy was so wrong, why hasn't he changed it?

The reason he is in knots is because, just like Peter Kemp, he is unwilling to deal with the real problem; Eileen MacDonald, who was the person who actually didn't agree with the real policy, and picked and chose what policies she would work to.





One of the many lies told by Eileen MacDonald under oath was that Kathy McCabe had asked me to produce regular reports that would list examples of data errors in the Student Records database so that staff  in the relevant departments could use it to correct the bad data. Not only was this a lie, but it also clearly demonstrates how evil Eileen MacDonald really is.

I had been very much in favour of producing reports of bad data because, as a conscientious Database Administrator, I wanted a clean database for my users. Although I didn't know it at the time, it seems that Eileen had been instrumental in causing that data to become bad in the first place by allowing large numbers of staff to insert data into the Student Records system by a quick method, which although might have seemed a fantastic idea to those staff, was actually a horrendously bad idea, and one that, in any normal organisation, a Database Administrator  responsible for the integrity of the data, would have been consulted upon before allowing non validated data to enter the database. 

Eileen had deliberately hidden this horrendously bad idea from me, because when Jackie O'Neil alerted me to it, she challenged Jackie by asking her "Why did you have to go and tell him?"

Having made herself the darling of the users by allowing them to insert data so much more quickly, Eileen had probably been making me out as the person responsible for allowing bad data into the database, even though I had known nothing about it.

I met with Eileen and Kathy. I strongly recommended that we stop allowing further bad data to enter the database. It's hardly a good reason to have shit in your database just because you can enter that shit very quickly. You don't see many systems being advertised on the basis that that they allow shit to be entered very quickly into their database. There's a term that I'm sure most people are aware of: "Garbage in, garbage out!" What that means is that if you allow shit or garbage into your database, then any decisions based on that data will be shit or garbage too. One of the most important reasons for having data in a database is to allow you to make decisions based on that data. In that respect, University of Stirling is a wholly unprofessional organisation.

At that meeting, I also strongly recommended that we take steps to clean up that data, but they both rejected my recommendation. I suspect it was because the users may have wondered why Eileen had allowed the quick means of entering bad data when she should have known that it was going to take a lot of time to clean it up to make it useful.

There are witnesses to the fact that I was strongly in favour of producing regular reports on bad data. I had discussed it with David Black and Paul Scott who both agreed with me. However, the best witness of all is Lynn McDonald who agreed with me so strongly that she encouraged Kathy to allow me to do it. Kathy refused. She thought it would seem like we were telling the users that they had made mistakes.

Lynn McDonald then provided support to Eileen after I lodged a grievance against her. She may not, at that time, have known what a liar Eileen is, but she certainly knows now.

Nobody in their wildest dreams could ever have imagined that Lynn McDonald would ever be a bully or a supporter of bullies. It just wasn't in her make-up. In a way, Lynn is even more disappointing than the more direct bullies. To stand by and watch what has happened to me and do nothing is possibly worse than the direct bullies. It is the bystanders who do nothing, or who unwittingly or deliberately support the bullies that ensure bullying continues. They are no better than the bullies. They conform to a bullying and scapegoating culture.



Another lie, that I even thought might have been true at the tribunal, came from Eric Hall. He stated that Selina Gibb had informed him about her (completely false) account of me going wild and red and spitting on her desk in anger, etc.  He added that he was so concerned that he informed Kathy McCabe about it. Well, Kathy denied several times that Eric had ever told her anything about Selina saying this. I now believe Eric had made this up to support Selina. Pathetic! Eric would say anything to help him keep his job.





To be continued...

False claims of bullying in retaliation to genuine allegations of bullying

It is known that bullies, once accused by their target of bullying, will then make a malicious claim that it is they who are the target and that the real target is the bully. That is the case of Kathy McCabe.

However, a responsible employer will be wise to this tactic and carry out a thorough investigation. Stirling University is not a responsible employer. It is the complete opposite of a responsible employer. It went further, and upheld Kathy McCabe's malicious complaints and ignored my own allegations. They seem to think that that is somehow clever. Far from it! It stinks!

To add insult to injury, Mark Toole dismissed me, claiming that not only did I bully my manager (as if), I also bullied my colleagues, or at least the female ones. He goes on to say that their gender was my motivation for bullying them.

In my letter of dismissal, he gives an example of me bullying women on the basis of their gender. It happened before he even joined the university, and I had never been spoken to about it. I raised a grievance against my colleague, Eileen MacDonald, who was due to go off on maternity leave a few weeks later. He claims that I deliberately timed it to maximise her distress while on maternity leave.

I had notified his predecessor, Peter Kemp that I wished to raise a formal grievance against her. That was more than two months before her maternity leave. He asked me to write back with the details of my grievance, and I did. I sent them to Peter Kemp, but not to Eileen MacDonald. It was Peter who informed Eileen of the grievance; not me. Then he decided not to process my grievance, which makes me wonder why he bothered to tell her about it.

In court, I asked Mark Toole what would have been an acceptable length of time to raise a grievance against a woman who may be about to go on maternity leave. He refused to specify a length of time.

This has to be sex discrimination, in my view, because it can only apply to women. And he is not saying that it was ordinary bullying, but bullying specifically based on gender. And since he refuses to state the period of "grace" that a woman should be allowed, it may not ever be permissible, in his mind, for a man to raise a grievance against a woman.

Not only that, Mark also considers that by raising that grievance, I contributed the main part in the alleged breakdown in our working relationship. So regardless of her maternity leave, it was still part of his reason for dismissing me. He does not dispute that the content of my grievance was genuine, so basically what he is saying is that you can be sacked for raising a genuine grievance. Nowhere in Stirling University's Grievance Procedure will you find reference to this extraordinary information.

My grievance against Eileen was never processed. Instead, Eileen was invited to complain about me without any risk of her complaints being investigated.

I asked Human Resources Director, Martin McCrindle, about the disciplinary process used by Mark Toole. If an employee had made a malicious complaint against me, at what point in the process would that have been discovered? He said that it would have been discovered by Mark Toole's judgement. He didn't think it would have been necessary for any of the complaints to be investigated.

Basically, employees at the university have no rights whatsoever. All it takes is for someone to make a false allegation against you, and no matter whether or not you can prove that it is false, you can be sacked for it.

And as in my own case, where management were anxious to get rid of me, they can actively encourage those false allegations from colleagues with a grudge.

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act

The author of a recent message I posted referred to the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act. Here is the FAQ about the act.

Under this act, I cannot find any evidence that employers who receive a grievance about bullying that has already caused a period of stress related absence, are advised that senior management should lie in order to cover up that bullying, rather than act to remove the source of bullying. My view is that to act in that way, senior management may be guilty of gross negligence.

Where can I find the Act and any guidance?

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.

When did the new Act come into force?

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act was given Royal assent on 26 July 2007. The offence came into force on 6 April 2008 and is called corporate manslaughter in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and corporate homicide in Scotland.

Provisions in the Act which relate to publicity orders (see section 10 of the Act ) will commence when sentencing guidelines are published. It is anticipated that this will be by Summer 2009.

Provisions in the Act which relate to the management of custody (see sections 2(1)(d) and 2(2) of the Act ) will also come into force at a later stage. It is expected that the implementation period will be between 3-5 years.

Are there any new duties or obligations under the Act?

There are no new duties or obligations under the Act, nor is the new offence part of health and safety law. It is, however, specifically linked to existing health and safety requirements.

What do companies and organisations need to do to comply?

Companies and organisations that take their obligations under health and safety law seriously are not likely to be in breach of the new provisions. Nonetheless, companies and organisations should keep their health and safety management systems under review, in particular, the way in which their activities are managed or organised by senior management.

Where does health and safety legislation come in?

Under the Act, health and safety legislation means "any statutory provision dealing with health and safety matters" so it will include transport (road, rail, river, sea, air) food safety and workplace safety as enforced by HSE and local authorities.

Juries will be required to consider breaches of health and safety legislation in determining liability of companies and other corporate bodies for corporate manslaughter/homicide. Juries may also consider whether a company or organisation has taken account of any appropriate health and safety guidance and the extent to which the evidence shows that there were attitudes, policies, systems or accepted practices within the organisation that were likely to have encouraged any such serious management failure or have produced tolerance of it.

Who will investigate and prosecute under the new offence?

The police will investigate suspected cases of corporate manslaughter/homicide. Prosecution decisions will be made by the Crown Prosecution Service (England and Wales), the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (Scotland) and the Director of Public Prosecutions (Northern Ireland).

What is the role of health and safety regulators like HSE, local authorities etc?

As now, there will be a joint approach to work-related deaths between all the relevant regulatory authorities in line with the principles of the Work Related Deaths Protocol.

Will directors, board members or other individuals be prosecuted?

The offence is concerned with corporate liability and does not apply to directors or other individuals who have a senior role in the company or organisation. However, existing health and safety offences and gross negligence manslaughter will continue to apply to individuals. Prosecutions against individuals will continue to be taken where there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to do so.

Is there any advice or guidance for directors or board members on what they should be doing and what their responsibilities are under health and safety legislation?

In conjunction with the Institute of Directors, HSE has published guidance for directors on their responsibilities for health and safety - 'Leading health and safety at work: leadership actions for directors and board members’ (INDG417) [450KB] . The guidance sets out good practice for directors, addressing them in language and style they will find authoritative and convincing, informing Boards and their members in the public, private and third sectors, as to how to provide leadership in health and safety so as to help their organisation meet its legal obligations as an employer under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and gain the business benefits arising from effective, sensible health and safety management.

It should be borne in mind that HSE is only one of the health and safety regulators that might produce relevant health and safety guidance. Organisations and companies can also seek guidance from any regulators in their own industry or sector.

What penalties will a company or organisation face?

Penalties will include unlimited fines, remedial orders and publicity orders. A remedial order will require a company or organisation to take steps to remedy any management failure that led to a death. The court can also impose an order requiring the company or organisation to publicise that it has been convicted of the offence, giving the details, the amount of any fine imposed and the terms of any remedial order made. The publicity order provisions will not come into force until the Sentencing Guidelines Council has completed its work on the relevant guidance.

From here

Westhues's Checklist Of Mobbing Indicators

Westhues devised the following list of mobbing indicators, with indicator number 12 probably being the most important:

By standard criteria of job performance, the target is at least average, probably above average.

Rumours and gossip circulate about the target’s misdeeds: “Did you hear what she did last week?”

The target is not invited to meetings or voted onto committees, is excluded or excludes self.

Collective focus on a critical incident that “shows what kind of man he really is”.

Shared conviction that the target needs some kind of formal punishment, “to be taught a lesson”.

Unusual timing of the decision to punish, e. g., apart from the annual performance review.

Emotion-laden, defamatory rhetoric about the target in oral and written communications.

Formal expressions of collective negative sentiment toward the target, e. g. a vote of censure, signatures on a petition, meeting to discuss what to do about the target.

High value on secrecy, confidentiality, and collegial solidarity among the mobbers.

Loss of diversity of argument, so that it becomes dangerous to “speak up for” or defend the target.

The adding up of the target’s real or imagined venial sins to make a mortal sin that cries for action.

The target is seen as personally abhorrent, with no redeeming qualities; stigmatizing, exclusionary labels are applied.

Disregard of established procedures, as mobbers take matters into their own hands.

Resistance to independent, outside review of sanctions imposed on the target.

Outraged response to any appeals for outside help the target may make.

Mobbers’ fear of violence from target, target’s fear of violence from mobbers, or both.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Westhues

Message From Another Bullying Victim

This is a message I received recently from someone who knows what I'm going through, because she has been through it herself. There are very striking similarities in our experiences.

I had a stress breakdown as I couldn't cope with the bullying any longer. I felt there was no support from colleagues or from managers. In fact the bullying had spread from one principal bully to several others. I have found out subsequently that this is quite common. At some level everyone knows bullying is going on. I have observed that there is usually a principal bully who is often joined by others, and who, if they are skilful enough can get the others to do the dirty work while they themselves appear to stay clean. Some people side with the bully because they are inherently bullies themselves, and enjoy the sense of power they have. Others side with the bully because they hope they will be safe, so they act from fear of being the next victim. Others keep their heads down and choose to view the situation as a personality clash so they don't need to do anything about it. They are terrified they might become a victim if they speak out. Most avoid the victim. In a strange way everyone is a victim of the bully and bullying can only exist where there is poor management. It's a bit like when harassed parents keep giving in to toddler tantrums and eventually create a monster.

I was off with stress for over 7 months during which time I took out a grievance against the principal bully which was upheld. Although my grievance was upheld, I found after I got back to work that the macho bullying culture had hardened. I think it is a pack animal instinctive thing to go for someone who is weak or wounded. It even spread to some of the students, part, I think, of the subliminal pack animal thing. I felt I was being watched all the time to see if I would slip up so they could 'get' me and the stress was intolerable. I'm sure some of it was self-imposed. I knew if I went off ill without completing my semester's teaching I probably wouldn't make it back again. I didn't want to live with being a failure.

The institution did make attempts to put support in place but no-one realised just how much support someone in my situation would need - much better to not let it get so bad in the first place by ensuring that managers are properly trained. I didn't know who, if anyone, I could trust in the department so I tended to keep to myself. I was in a PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder state) and I couldn't cope with large numbers of people or a lot of noise so avoided the coffee room. I self harmed for a long time to cope with the pressures of being back, and eventually close to the end of semester I showed someone. I had discussed self-harming with my counsellor who told me there are two types of wound - one is a slashing kind of action, expressing anger and rage. The other is much more precise and controlled, just deep enough to release some endorphins after the initial pain. That kind of self harm represented despair. I was doing the second kind.

Occupational Health advised me to get signed off but I knew if I didn't complete that semester's teaching I would probaly never make it back. I did manage to find black humour in some of the situations I found myself in, like thinking about what method I might use to attempt suicide and my reasons for rejecting it - I didn't have the energy to go and fetch a knife, and it probably wasn't sharp enough anyway as I never
sharpened them, or I might damage the tree or the lorry I considered driving my car into, or if not successful I might be a vegetable for the rest of my life and my young family didn't like veg! I even had my counsellor in stitches on several occasions as we discussed some of this stuff which gave me a glimmer of hope for an alternative career.

The institution responded to the self harm and the suicidal thoughts by wanting me to be assessed by a psychiatrist. Were they just covering themselves, to show they were
being proactive or were they trying to get me on some kind of mental health retirement thing? I never worked that one out but whichever it was became irrelevant as my counsellor wrote refuting my need to be assessed by a psychiatrist as the counsellor had judged me to be 'normal' in an abnormal situation.

This all happened years ago so obviously I survived to tell the tale but for several years I was hypervigilant and could not react well to stress. Repairing battered self confidence and self esteem takes much longer and some vicitms of bullying are so damaged they never fully recover, never become fully functional again. Some are so damaged it can be years before they work again, if at all.

Allan is braver than I was in starting a blog and being so open. Although it happened years ago, I've asked him not to identify the institution where I worked and I salute his bravery.

The saddest thing about bullying is that it is people who are good at their job, or popular with students, or colleagues, or customers, who are targetted by people who are trying to distract from their own inadequacies - poor consolation though if your self confidence and self esteem have been destroyed.

Victims of bullying are generally high achieving, self motivated, empathic, trusting and a bit naive while bullies are generally inadequate, insecure, promoted beyond their capabilites and lacking empathy. In extreme cases they can be sociopaths incapable of putting themselves in other people's shoes and reckless of the consequences of their actions.

I got very interested in the topic of corporate manslaughter (corporate homicide in Scotland)- a way of making top management take responsibility if people have fatal accidents due to a failure to observe proper health and safety guidelines concerning the requirement to provide a safe working environment, which I believe covers
psychological safety as well as physical safety. So if someone had a fatal accident or committed suicide because of overwork and stress, or because of unchecked bullying the organisation could be found to be liable.

Selina Gibb - Lying Bastard!

Selina Gibb, Riverbank Lodge, Auchinlay Rd, Dunblane, FK15 9BF

One of the most startling revelations about what happened to me at Stirling University is the fact that Selina Gibb lied about a private conversation she had one day while we were alone in the office.

Selina and I had always got on very well, which makes it all the more astonishing that she would do this.

We were in the very large open office that we shared with about 12 other colleagues. I was preparing my grievance against Kathy McCabe. I stopped to go to the tea room to get some drinking water. On my way out, Selina asked me why I wasn't at a meeting that I would normally have attended. I said that I was preparing my grievance against Kathy, and I answered a couple of questions she asked me before I left to get my water. When I returned, she asked me some more questions that I answered before I returned to my desk to continue what I was doing.

Unknown to me, it appears she may have gone to Eric Hall and told a pack of lies about this conversation. She claimed that I went wild when talking to her, went red in the face with rage and was so irate I was spitting on her desk. She also claims that I said that her line manager, Eileen MacDonald was the root of all evil.

I would be delighted to take part in a lie detector test with Selina in order to establish what actually happened that day. I am also prepared to swear on my life and my children's lives that she lied. I would be very interested to hear if Selina would also be prepared to take part in a lie detector test and whether she is prepared to swear on her children's lives.

The conversation took place in January 2010. In April 2010, she said that she was so frightened by the conversation that she was anxious and nervous in my presence. However, I have a private email from her dated March 2010 in which she invites me to hear her "funnies" about her skiing lessons. Another March email confirms that she is very happy with a piece of work I've done for her. Also, at the end of February 2010, I have a digital recording of her in which she interrupts a work conversation I was having with Una Forsyth in order to make jokes about my "dancing shoes". Hardly the actions of someone who is anxious and nervous around me. I didn't learn of her allegation until June 2010.

She is one lying bastard!

Stirling University should demand that the lying bastard take a lie detector test. There are very serious implications to this. No man can be safe if they are alone in an office with a woman, because they could, despite being completely innocent, be accused of anything including sexual assault. Malicious complaints of this type must be stamped out, and the offender should be sacked.

If Selina Gibb has told the truth, then she should have nothing to fear. But I know that she is an incredible lying bastard!

If you are a friend of hers, then surely you would encourage her to take the test in order to prove that she was honest and that I am making false accusations.

Under oath, she stated that she passed her HNC in Computing, but not the HND. Eileen MacDonald had previously told me Selina passed her HND.

PS
Although Eric Hall stated in court that Selina had told him this story soon after I had the conversation with her, he went on to say that he reported it to Kathy McCabe. Kathy confirmed in court that neither he nor anyone else had told her about it. It would seem that Eric was simply lying to try to support Selina's false claims. He might have thought that Kathy would have backed up his story, but of course, the lie didn't just involve Eric. It also involved Selina and everybody else that she had already told that it was a lie. So it would have proved too awkward for Kathy to support that particular lie. She is holding on to the possibility that there may still actually be someone who thinks she's honest.

It leaves the question also; if Selina was as frightened and upset as she said she was, why did she wait three months before reporting it?

It is essential that Selina is punished for this. It is no trivial matter to deliberately lie to ruin a man's career and life.

Eric Hall should also explain how his account does not match Kathy's. If he has lied in court, he should be punished too, and it seems almost certain that he did. If Selina did tell him this, and as he claimed in court, she was "shaking" as she was telling him, why did he do nothing about it, and why did he claim to tell Kathy when he obviously didn't? It's certainly not the type of thing that Kathy would forget. I imagine she would have dreamed about hearing such things about me.

Tribunal Updates

Regular updates to the goings on at the tribunal can be found in my Alcohol Diary page.

Just look for the following attractive indicator...

TE...TRIBUNAL UPDATE...TRIBUNAL UPDATE...TRIBUNAL UPDATE...TRIBUNAL UPDA

There's also all the latest stuff that was happening in the Northern Soul scene about 37 years ago. However, I don't have an attractive indicator for that information, so you may have to do a bit of searching.

Enjoy!

Fair dismissal, my arse!

I've spoken to a few people about the treatment I received from Stirling University. The general response is one of surprise that a university would behave that way. It's natural to think that a university comprises the smartest brains in the country, and that they would lead the way in employment matters. In reality, however, they are still in the dark ages where they believe that employees should have no rights and that they should be able to dismiss employees on a whim.

If their accounts department was run the way they run their Human Resources department, they would still be using books and quills instead of computers.

Fortunately, there are laws to protect employees from rogue employers like Stirling University. You need a genuine reason for dismissing someone, and it is not a genuine reason to dismiss an employee for whistleblowing. Of all employers, universities should be encouraging whistleblowers, not sacking them.

There is a test that Employment Tribunals use to decide if a dismissal for misconduct was fair or not.

1 The employer believed that the employee was guilty.

2 They had reasonable grounds on which to sustain that belief.

3 They carried out as much investigation as reasonable in the circumstances.

4 Where there was conflicting evidence, real attempts were made to determine what happened by locating independent witnesses and evidence.

The law does not allow an employer to perform a sham investigation and to ignore all of the evidence that doesn't help them achieve their aim to dismiss a whistleblower. The oppressive nature of my dismissal, and because the university generally shows contempt for employment law means that I am seeking an award of exemplary damages as well as the normal uplift applied to compensation when an employer fails to carry out grievance and disciplinary procedures appropriately. There is no upper limit to the compensation awarded for detriment caused by acts in response to making protected disclosures. Sex discrimination also attracts an award for injury to feelings. A person or persons may have to spend some time in jail for perverting the course of justice with the fraudulent document. Others who lie in court also risk a prison sentence. The publicity of justice may cause the university to reconsider its behaviour; alternatively it may become worse, but less obvious.

1 The university carried out an extremely contrived investigation, light years from the reasonable one that is required.

2 They did not believe I was guilty. Indeed, they absolutely knew I was innocent, and that was the motive for conducting such a contrived investigation.

3 It immediately followed a sham grievance investigation which was so absurd that they had to invent an investigation a year later to make it look like there had been an investigation. But even the invented investigation is absurd.

4 It also followed malicious complaints from employees that I had already complained about. My complaints were basically ignored while they carried out their sham disciplinary process.

5 The malicious complaints arose as a direct result of an act by the university in response to my protected disclosure, and that equates to detriment.

6 Independent witnesses were avoided at all costs despite my pleas.

7 The university has a very poor track record with regard to employment law.

If Stirling University can convince the tribunal that my dismissal was fair, then we would be as well scrapping all of the law books and making everything legal. I doubt if I'd want to live in a world where the treatment I received is legal.

The Perjury

Perjury.

(1) If any person lawfully sworn as a witness or as an interpreter in a judicial proceeding wilfully makes a statement material in that proceeding, which he knows to be false or does not believe to be true, he shall be guilty of perjury, and shall, on conviction thereof on indictment, be liable to penal servitude for a term not exceeding seven years, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to a fine or to both such penal servitude or imprisonment and fine.

(2) The expression “judicial proceeding” includes a proceeding before any court, tribunal, or person having by law power to hear, receive, and examine evidence on oath.

(3) Where a statement made for the purposes of a judicial proceeding is not made before the tribunal itself, but is made on oath before a person authorised by law to administer an oath to the person who makes the statement, and to record or authenticate the statement, it shall, for the purposes of this section, be treated as having been made in a judicial proceeding.

(4) A statement made by a person lawfully sworn in England for the purposes of a judicial proceeding—

(a) in another part of His Majesty’s dominions; or

(b) in a British tribunal lawfully constituted in any place by sea or land outside His Majesty’s dominions; or

(c) in a tribunal of any foreign state, shall, for the purposes of this section, be treated as a statement made in a judicial proceeding in England.

(5) Where, for the purposes of a judicial proceeding in England, a person is lawfully sworn under the authority of an Act of Parliament—

(a) in any other part of His Majesty’s dominions; or

(b) before a British tribunal or a British officer in a foreign country, or within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty of England;

a statement made by such person so sworn as aforesaid (unless the Act of Parliament under which it was made otherwise specifically provides) shall be treated for the purposes of this section as having been made in the judicial proceeding in England for the purposes whereof it was made.

(6) The question whether a statement on which perjury is assigned was material is a question of law to be determined by the court of trial.

Perjury Act 1911.