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
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Sunday
My Letter to Gerry McCormac
I wrote to Stirling University Principal and Vice Chancellor, Gerry McCormac recently to find out from him what action the university has taken with regard to the fraudulent document they sent to Glasgow Employment Tribunal. I also asked him who gave instructions for that fraudulent document to be created.
On 6 December 2011, I received the following letter from Kevin Clarke
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The Principal has passed your correspondence of 25 November 2011 for me to reply.
It is the policy of the University not to correspond on matters whilst they are the subject of proceedings of the Employment Tribunal which have yet to be concluded.
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I don't know if this is a policy that the university has published anywhere, or if it's one they've made up on the spur of the moment. What surprises me, if this is a university policy, is that it is a policy they are actually working to, unlike their policies on bullying, grievances and disciplinary matters. What is their policy on committing fraud and perverting the course of justice?
I would hope that if PC Plod comes knocking at their door, they may have to consider letting him in on their secret.
Gerry is to appear as a witness at the tribunal hearing. Will he refuse to answer my questions then, I wonder? Will he say that he hasn't bothered to investigate a possible crime that has been reported to him? How does this compare with my own experience of being suspended from work in a flash to accommodate a sham investigation? Even if I was guilty of everything that I was accused of, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans compared to criminal fraud. If there's an innocent explanation for this, then why not tell us? Why leave everybody thinking that there's a possibility that Stirling University has perverted the course of justice? Surely the only reason he would want a criminal to retain their job at the university would be that the criminal is one of the untouchables or was following instructions from one of the untouchables.
His secrecy also offers little confidence to staff and students who are considering raising grievances. Surely he should be shouting loud and clear that the university will take swift action to remove the criminal element that carries out sham grievance and disciplinary processes. If he doesn't, staff and students would have every right to believe that he is somehow involved in it.
It began with bullying and sex discrimination by the Finance Director's wife, Kathy McCabe; then we had a sham grievance process to cover that up; then we had a sham disciplinary process to get rid of me for blowing the whistle on the bullying and sex discrimination; then we had criminal fraud to cover up the sham grievance process. And now we have the Principal of Stirling University covering up criminal fraud by his staff. Where will it end?
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25 November 2011
Dear Professor McCormac
I wrote to you on 23 September 2010 with a list of thirteen formal grievances I have with Stirling University employees. You replied saying that mechanisms had been exhausted, and my grievances were not processed.
Would you please explain why my grievances were not processed in accordance with the university’s grievance policy which states that an employee may raise grievances up to three months after leaving the university.
I now refer you to the very serious matter of criminal fraud. In relation to the claim I lodged with Glasgow Employment Tribunal, I asked Stirling University to provide details of how my grievance against Mrs Kathy McCabe resulted in all of my allegations against her being rejected. The university responded five months later with a ten page document. I attach the first page of that document.
I refer you to the first allegation [1] our useless DBA. It states that in order to investigate this allegation, Deputy Secretary, Eileen Schofield and HR Partner, Karen Stark referred to former colleague, Mr F’s statement between 5 and 24 March. In their findings they state that Mr F recalled an incident when Mrs O’Neil was unprofessional and derogatory in her remarks towards me when speaking to a third party supplier on the phone. The document then goes on to state that my allegation was upheld, but that it was not considered to be material.
However, Mr F’s statement, which I have attached, makes no reference to my allegation. The simple reason for this is that Ms Schofield and Ms Stark had not asked him about that, or any other allegation I had made. So when Ms Schofield referred to his statement, she could not have seen what she said she had seen that persuaded her that my allegation should be upheld.
Since Ms Schofield and Ms Stark had not asked Mr F about this allegation, there is no valid reason for them to have referred to his statement in order to attempt to come to any conclusion for this allegation. However, the document that Stirling University sent to the tribunal is a fraud. It is an amateurish attempt to persuade the tribunal that the grievance process, which I described as a sham, was conducted appropriately.
Three weeks after Ms Schofield had concluded her investigation and produced her report for the grievances between me and Mrs McCabe, I contacted Mr F. He clearly remembered the incident with Mrs O’Neil and wrote to me about it. He also informed Ms Stark about it. However, Ms Schofield could not possibly have known about that when she came to her conclusion. She hadn’t asked Mr F or Mrs McCabe or me about the incident. From the sham method that Ms Schofield used to investigate this allegation, she could only conclude that it didn’t happen.
It is now more than seven months since this fraud was committed by Stirling University. Would you please tell me what action you or anyone else at Stirling University has taken in that time in relation to this criminal act. Would you please tell me if you instructed employees to create this fraudulent document? Did University Secretary, Kevin Clarke give instructions for this fraudulent document to be produced?
Since I wrote to you in September 2010, matters have got much worse for Stirling University and I firmly believe it was unwise for you to have simply ignored my letter. To carry out sham internal grievance and disciplinary procedures is very serious, but Stirling University has gone a step further and attempted to pervert the course of justice by committing criminal fraud to deny me justice at the tribunal hearing.
I look forward to your reply.
On 6 December 2011, I received the following letter from Kevin Clarke
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The Principal has passed your correspondence of 25 November 2011 for me to reply.
It is the policy of the University not to correspond on matters whilst they are the subject of proceedings of the Employment Tribunal which have yet to be concluded.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't know if this is a policy that the university has published anywhere, or if it's one they've made up on the spur of the moment. What surprises me, if this is a university policy, is that it is a policy they are actually working to, unlike their policies on bullying, grievances and disciplinary matters. What is their policy on committing fraud and perverting the course of justice?
I would hope that if PC Plod comes knocking at their door, they may have to consider letting him in on their secret.
Gerry is to appear as a witness at the tribunal hearing. Will he refuse to answer my questions then, I wonder? Will he say that he hasn't bothered to investigate a possible crime that has been reported to him? How does this compare with my own experience of being suspended from work in a flash to accommodate a sham investigation? Even if I was guilty of everything that I was accused of, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans compared to criminal fraud. If there's an innocent explanation for this, then why not tell us? Why leave everybody thinking that there's a possibility that Stirling University has perverted the course of justice? Surely the only reason he would want a criminal to retain their job at the university would be that the criminal is one of the untouchables or was following instructions from one of the untouchables.
His secrecy also offers little confidence to staff and students who are considering raising grievances. Surely he should be shouting loud and clear that the university will take swift action to remove the criminal element that carries out sham grievance and disciplinary processes. If he doesn't, staff and students would have every right to believe that he is somehow involved in it.
It began with bullying and sex discrimination by the Finance Director's wife, Kathy McCabe; then we had a sham grievance process to cover that up; then we had a sham disciplinary process to get rid of me for blowing the whistle on the bullying and sex discrimination; then we had criminal fraud to cover up the sham grievance process. And now we have the Principal of Stirling University covering up criminal fraud by his staff. Where will it end?
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25 November 2011
Dear Professor McCormac
I wrote to you on 23 September 2010 with a list of thirteen formal grievances I have with Stirling University employees. You replied saying that mechanisms had been exhausted, and my grievances were not processed.
Would you please explain why my grievances were not processed in accordance with the university’s grievance policy which states that an employee may raise grievances up to three months after leaving the university.
I now refer you to the very serious matter of criminal fraud. In relation to the claim I lodged with Glasgow Employment Tribunal, I asked Stirling University to provide details of how my grievance against Mrs Kathy McCabe resulted in all of my allegations against her being rejected. The university responded five months later with a ten page document. I attach the first page of that document.
I refer you to the first allegation [1] our useless DBA. It states that in order to investigate this allegation, Deputy Secretary, Eileen Schofield and HR Partner, Karen Stark referred to former colleague, Mr F’s statement between 5 and 24 March. In their findings they state that Mr F recalled an incident when Mrs O’Neil was unprofessional and derogatory in her remarks towards me when speaking to a third party supplier on the phone. The document then goes on to state that my allegation was upheld, but that it was not considered to be material.
However, Mr F’s statement, which I have attached, makes no reference to my allegation. The simple reason for this is that Ms Schofield and Ms Stark had not asked him about that, or any other allegation I had made. So when Ms Schofield referred to his statement, she could not have seen what she said she had seen that persuaded her that my allegation should be upheld.
Since Ms Schofield and Ms Stark had not asked Mr F about this allegation, there is no valid reason for them to have referred to his statement in order to attempt to come to any conclusion for this allegation. However, the document that Stirling University sent to the tribunal is a fraud. It is an amateurish attempt to persuade the tribunal that the grievance process, which I described as a sham, was conducted appropriately.
Three weeks after Ms Schofield had concluded her investigation and produced her report for the grievances between me and Mrs McCabe, I contacted Mr F. He clearly remembered the incident with Mrs O’Neil and wrote to me about it. He also informed Ms Stark about it. However, Ms Schofield could not possibly have known about that when she came to her conclusion. She hadn’t asked Mr F or Mrs McCabe or me about the incident. From the sham method that Ms Schofield used to investigate this allegation, she could only conclude that it didn’t happen.
It is now more than seven months since this fraud was committed by Stirling University. Would you please tell me what action you or anyone else at Stirling University has taken in that time in relation to this criminal act. Would you please tell me if you instructed employees to create this fraudulent document? Did University Secretary, Kevin Clarke give instructions for this fraudulent document to be produced?
Since I wrote to you in September 2010, matters have got much worse for Stirling University and I firmly believe it was unwise for you to have simply ignored my letter. To carry out sham internal grievance and disciplinary procedures is very serious, but Stirling University has gone a step further and attempted to pervert the course of justice by committing criminal fraud to deny me justice at the tribunal hearing.
I look forward to your reply.
Saturday
Stirling Uni Tries to Silence Wikipedia
Professor David Donaldson
Stirling University doesn't like bad publicity. However that hasn't stopped them from using their corrupt practices to destroy people's lives. Instead, they try to hide their devious ways from the public gaze. Their lawyer obsessively raises the matter of my blog with judges because it is causing the university and several of its employees considerable embarrassment.
Since 2009, Wikipedia has displayed the story of David Donaldson, who in 2007 was a senior researcher at Stirling University. He removed a colleague's name from her research grant application, and replaced it with his own, attempting to make it look like it was his work. His act of piracy, which required swapping names eleven times, was discovered and he eventually wrote a letter of apology to his colleague, Dr. Rhodes. However, he later unfairly forced her out of her job at the university. She won her unfair dismissal claim at Glasgow Employment Tribunal in February 2009. Stirling University awarded Donaldson a Professorship shortly after he admitted to stealing Dr. Rhodes' work.
A number of attempts have been made to remove the article from Wikipedia. It is bound to be a source of embarrassment to the University. In the talk section for Wikipedia's Stirling University page, a discussion refers to a legal representative for the university asking for the Donaldson article to be removed. The request was rejected.
Times Higher Education carries a more detailed account of what happened.
Of course you must be wondering how an academic gets pushed out of a University by another academic. Dr. Rhodes was subjected to the same sham grievance procedure as I was. HR Director, Martin McCrindle conducted an investigation into her grievance and concluded there was no case to answer. He was backed by Principal, Christine Hallett. When Dr Rhodes told Martin McCrindle that she would prove what happened in court, McCrindle replied saying that she had 'no basis' to make a claim to the tribunal. As soon as she submitted her complaints to the tribunal, which she did as she had no other way of addressing what happened, they declared they wouldn't contest her claims! She won the case before it even got to court!
Their lawyer agreed with the judge when he said that not resisting her claims amounted to agreeing with them. Her claims included the fact that Donaldson's theft of her research had led to her dismissal (the theft for which she had a letter of apology) and a sham grievance procedure to investigate what happened when she found herself forced out. The university changed their reason for dismissing Dr. Rhodes three times. Each time she informed them that the reason was not valid in her case, so they just invented another false reason each time.
Similarly, in my own case, at my appeal hearing against dismissal I advised Martin McCrindle that my dismissal would prove embarrassing to the university and to several of its employees. He replied saying that that was only my opinion. Well, of course it was only my opinion, but I think it was a correct opinion. If my blog isn't causing anyone any embarrassment, then why is the university paying their lawyer to keep going on about it like a broken record? And if they weren't embarrassed by their sham grievance procedure, why would they risk a jail sentence by committing fraud in an attempt to cover it up, Martin?
Will Stirling University ever learn that they can't treat people like this?
Gerry McCormac - Get Your Own House In Order
Gerry McCormac
I'm reliably informed that if you Google Gerry McCormac, my blog is currently displayed on page one and position one. It's above Stirling University's website, and it's above the sites that relate to the teachers' review. It's also above the site where he is interviewed about his favourite teacher. Thanks to Gerry, my site is getting busier and busier, and more people are becoming familiar with Gerry's corrupt practices.
Gerry has the gall to tell teachers how to work better. He should get his own house in order before he starts telling other people where they are going wrong.
Why does he keep giving these interviews that make him out to be everybody's favourite uncle? Why does he not address the subject that google knows him best for? Why not have an open meeting, Gerry; invite me along and you can tell your audience what you've done to rid Stirling University of corruption? I'm sure you'd be able to make mincemeat of me, Gerry. I've been reduced to a wreck by Stirling University for being dedicated, hard working and conscientious. It happened under your watch, Gerry. Have a real interview where you don't agree in advance the safe, cutesy questions that you are allowed to be asked.
Questions like: What are you doing to reduce corruption at Stirling University? Where's the evidence? Why didn't you just sack Kevin Clarke and his cohorts? You say you know how to get the best out of people, how? Corruption? Where's the evidence of this? Why didn't you handle my grievances, Gerry? Are you a coward, Gerry? Did you give instructions for Stirling University to pervert the course of justice by producing a fraudulent document, Gerry? If not, what have you done about it in the seven months since it happened under your watch?
A whole load of google users will be wondering, Gerry.
Stirling University's grievance procedure states that, within three months of leaving the university, employees can still raise grievances against employees. I sent Gerry formal grievances on 23 September 2010 against 13 (thirteen) employees within three months of leaving the uni on 25 June 2010. He replied with a very curt letter saying that all mechanisms were exhausted.
He didn't explain why. Had I misunderstood the grievance procedure or something? I'm left wondering. I asked him the following question on 2 November 2011:
I refer you to the university grievance procedure which states that an employee may raise grievances within three months of leaving. I lodged a number of grievances with you in September 2010. Please state why you did not action those grievances, and the names of all employees who encouraged you not to action them.
That's been 17 days, but I've still not heard. Maybe if I'd asked him what his favourite teddy was, I would have got an answer instantly.
Here's my letter that Gerry couldn't be bothered dealing with.
Formal Grievances
I worked at the University from 7 May 1997 until I was dismissed by Mark Toole on 25 June 2010. My dismissal immediately followed a formal grievance I lodged against my manager, Kathy McCabe.
I now wish to raise formal grievances against a number of employees. The grievance procedure says that I should send the grievances to Human Resources Services, but two of my grievances are against employees from that department. My grievances are against the following employees:
Kathy McCabe
I would now like my grievance to be processed properly with integrity. A decision should be based on the facts.
Eileen MacDonald
Eileen gave false evidence during an investigation held as part of my grievance against Kathy McCabe. She also gave false evidence during the disciplinary investigation that led to my dismissal. She also colluded with colleagues who gave similar false evidence. I submitted a grievance against Eileen in June 2008 which was never processed. That grievance was a result of Eileen sending an email to our manager in which she made offensive comments about me and provided misleading information about my performance.
One example of her dishonesty is her claim that I treated Programmers inconsistently with regard to database security procedures. This was a topic which was fully discussed with the team (BSDS) at a meeting in which I was heckled by Eileen who had made this claim. Database security procedures were agreed with all team members and were applied consistently by myself and the part time Database Administrator, David Black. There is ample evidence of me having corresponded with Eileen in attempts to discover why she couldn’t work within the agreed procedures, and that my attempts were ignored.
Una Forsyth
Una also gave false evidence during those two investigations and colluded with others. One example is that she falsely stated that she had not physically assaulted me. Another example is that she gave the strong impression that we didn’t get along and that she avoided any contact with me, and that I generally didn’t get along with the women in the team. She did this because this was the story that the employees with whom she had colluded had invented. Ample evidence shows that we got along very well, and that she had even recently cooked me a meal.
Jackie O’Neil
Jackie also gave false evidence during those two investigations and colluded with others. One example is in relation to an incident when she shouted at me while slamming her hand on her desk. There is clear evidence that her account of this incident is false.
Selina Gibb
Selina also gave false evidence during the disciplinary investigations and colluded with others. One example is that Selina claimed to be anxious and nervous around me, when ample evidence showed that this clearly was not the case.
Eileen Schofield
Eileen chaired my grievance hearing and deliberately produced a dishonest report. The very least that I would expect when raising a grievance is that Eileen should have asked Kathy McCabe to respond to my allegations, but she did not. She has not acted in good faith, and has deliberately attempted to cover up my manager’s bullying behaviour for which I submitted irrefutable evidence.
Kevin Clarke
Kevin chaired my appeal against Eileen’s decision. He failed to dismiss Eileen’s dishonest report and arrange for my grievance to be processed properly.
Graham Millar and Gail Miller
Graham and Gail carried out the Disciplinary Investigation dishonestly. Their role was to establish facts and not to make judgements or come to conclusions. They did precisely the opposite by deliberately ignoring the facts and by making judgements and coming to conclusions. They did this because the facts did not match the conclusions they were determined to come to. Examples of this is that they did not check out conflicting evidence and did not interview someone I’d said witnessed the incident with Jackie O’Neil. The conclusions are highly offensive towards me, even though it would have been clear to them that they had been given false statements. Mark Toole said he chose Graham to carry out a “fair and thorough” investigation because he is an experienced investigator. This confirms my view that the investigation was carried out dishonestly.
Mark Toole
Mark failed to process my grievance against Eileen MacDonald since he joined the university in Occtober 2008. He continues to falsely claim that I had withdrawn that grievance despite me having confirmed in the presence of my union representative in 2009 that I had not. He also failed to process my complaint against Jackie O’Neil. He also failed to take my grievance against Kathy McCabe seriously, and failed in his duty to care for my health. His own actions have caused my health to deteriorate further. His decision to dismiss me was made dishonestly. I presented ample proof that the complainants had lied and that they had colluded. He failed to ensure that the Investigators produced a report that established the facts. He has failed to discipline employees who have made malicious complaints. He has dishonestly stated that he sees no evidence that the complainants had lied and colluded and that he sees no motive for such a conspiracy. The motive was clear that two of the complainants were facing complaints made by me, another had just been interviewed about having physically assaulted me, and the other admitted to being a close friend of her line manager. He speaks of gross misconduct over a number of years, yet there is no record of any of this prior to me lodging my formal grievance against my manager. He makes no attempt to explain the staggeringly conflicting evidence. Mark also witnessed Kathy McCabe bullying me during two meetings.
Karen Stark
Karen failed to ensure that these procedures were carried out honestly and in good faith. Karen’s actions were consistently to support a bullying manager. She worked very closely with Eileen Schofield and could see that her report did not reflect the facts available to her. She did not ensure that my grievance was processed properly. She deliberately avoided interviewing an employee I told her was a witness to a specific incident. She was also aware that the Disciplinary Investigators had avoided interviewing David Black. She even announced during the Disciplinary Hearing that I was “drunk”. I also saw an email from Kathy McCabe to Karen in which Kathy thanks her for her support in this matter. Karen also witnessed Kathy McCabe bullying me during two meetings.
Martin McCrindle and Karen Plouvier
Despite the obvious flaws in the Disciplinary Procedure, Martin and Karen failed to overturn the decision to dismiss me, and arrange for the matter to be properly investigated without bias. They also failed to explain how the evidence given by the complainants conflicts so staggeringly with the facts presented.
It is clear that the university suffers from wide spread corruption which in this instance has been used to protect bullies and dismiss a dedicated member of staff. I hope that you will be as shocked as I am that this type of behaviour exists in a university in the 21st century, and that you will take appropriate action to resolve these very serious issues.
Yours sincerely
Friday
The Witnesses
The people who are being called by either side as witnesses for my employment tribunal case versus University of Stirling are, in no particular order:
1 Graham Millar
If Mr Millar can withdraw his tongue from Mark Toole's arse for long enough, then I intend to probe him in relation to his bizarre investigation, in which he seemed to begin with the lynching, then moved backwards towards gathering the evidence with the handicap of a mouthful of Mark's shite.
2 Mark Toole
I guess that all I'm going to get from him is "on the balance of probability...." Mark doesn't expect to win at the tribunal. All he wanted was me out of the uni, cos he was too much of a coward to deal with Kathy. She's far more of a man than he'll ever be.
3 Karen Stark
She is nowhere near as clever as she thinks she is. She will fail disastrously. I'm on to her.
4 Martin McCrindle
Surprisingly, the university raised the issue of the Framework process in their case against me. This means that I will be able to cross examine Mr McCrindle and Karen Stark on the subject. A spectacular own goal, surely! Bizarrely, at my appeal against unfair dismissal, Martin asked me to keep quiet about the liars who had conspired to have me dismissed. Why would I want to do that? He must really have thought I was stupid. I'm deeply offended.
5 Gail Miller
I expect that Mark and Graham and Gail will try to defend the investigation with some false story that they have agreed upon. Nevertheless, it is completely indefensible. I wouldn't want to defend it. They've invented their own disciplinary procedures. They completely ignored the university's. They had to batter the square peg into the round hole. I'd imagine that the tribunal would wonder why neither of them saw the flaws in their corrupt process.
6 Professor Gerry McCormac
What have you done about all the corruption, Gerry? Nothing? Yet you think I shouldn't be reinstated? Surely you should be begging me to return?
7 Kevin Clarke
He's going to have to explain how each flaw in the grievance procedure isn't a flaw. Rather him than me.
8 Professor Christine Hallett
What the fuck can she possibly say for herself? She has to be the queen of corruption. To pretend to everybody that she was our protector, when in reality she was the executioner; that takes a very special type of bastard. I wasn't her first victim either. She's a habitual corrupt bastard. Corruption is her hobby. Doesn't give a fuck about people's health. Money! Money! Money! I wish her a very slow painful death.
9 Jackie O'Neil
Jackie and Kathy are very similar. She's a loose cannon. Who knows what she could say? But I expect I will have evidence to prove it's a lie.
10 Dr Peter Kemp
This guy has been talking shite with impunity for so long, he won't know what else to do. He's in for an extremely hard time unless I'm seriously missing something.
11 Kathy McCabe
Nobody, and I mean nobody knows what on earth she might say on the witness stand. I fear there could be fake tears. When she is faced with the fact that she is a liar, the hearing may have to be suspended while she considers her response. During mediation, she refused to answer any questions, and she made an almighty fuss because I mentioned her dishonesty. Now she has more questions to answer. She won't be able to refuse to answer them. She has lied even more since mediation, and there is irrefutable evidence to prove it. "Isn't it true, Mrs McCabe that you told me, more than once, that honesty goes to the core of your very being? Then how do you explain this, and this, and this, and this, and..." Kathy described the mediation process as "the most difficult and deeply unpleasant experience of my working life." She will think it was a party compared with her time in the witness box. This won't be pretty, but it should be very entertaining.
12 Selina Gibb
I can only assume that someone is going to advise her what to say. I hope it's Eileen MacDonald.
13 Una Forsyth
Where do I begin? The university has definitely let Una down. They deliberately made her think I had made a complaint about her. It's almost unfair, but I have to treat her as what she is; a liar, and an extremely bad one at that.
14 Eileen MacDonald
Another one who has been led to believe that she is clever. This will be disastrous for Eileen. I suspect tears will flow if they allow this to proceed. She will be faced with her own stupidity and dishonesty. There's no escape. She has run out of lives. She depended on me for help, but I won't be helping her. She has dug herself into a very deep hole when she should have been keeping her mouth well and truly shut. No hope. And she'll probably blame Kathy for getting her into such a mess.
15 Eileen Schofield
My only fear with Eileen is that she'll come dressed as Mystic Meg and tell us the next day's horse results. No wait! That would be a good thing. A £1 roll-up on these 20 horses please, Mr Bookie!
16 David Black
He will have to check with Eric what he's allowed to say. He's shit scared of Kathy, so he will back her up to the hilt. But there's a rule at the tribunal. You have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That means he will have to make a choice, and I suspect the spineless twat will lie with everything he's got. A complete integrity vacuum; he'll say anything to keep Kathy happy. He'd sell his granny for a ha'penny. I don't intend to make it easy though.
17 Eric Hall
Eric will turn up full of confidence that he will eat me for breakfast. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. He will definitely not be saying that Kathy is a fucking bitch. I expect she will be a fucking Goddess when I cross examine him.
18 Karen Plouviez
1 Graham Millar
If Mr Millar can withdraw his tongue from Mark Toole's arse for long enough, then I intend to probe him in relation to his bizarre investigation, in which he seemed to begin with the lynching, then moved backwards towards gathering the evidence with the handicap of a mouthful of Mark's shite.
2 Mark Toole
I guess that all I'm going to get from him is "on the balance of probability...." Mark doesn't expect to win at the tribunal. All he wanted was me out of the uni, cos he was too much of a coward to deal with Kathy. She's far more of a man than he'll ever be.
3 Karen Stark
She is nowhere near as clever as she thinks she is. She will fail disastrously. I'm on to her.
4 Martin McCrindle
Surprisingly, the university raised the issue of the Framework process in their case against me. This means that I will be able to cross examine Mr McCrindle and Karen Stark on the subject. A spectacular own goal, surely! Bizarrely, at my appeal against unfair dismissal, Martin asked me to keep quiet about the liars who had conspired to have me dismissed. Why would I want to do that? He must really have thought I was stupid. I'm deeply offended.
5 Gail Miller
I expect that Mark and Graham and Gail will try to defend the investigation with some false story that they have agreed upon. Nevertheless, it is completely indefensible. I wouldn't want to defend it. They've invented their own disciplinary procedures. They completely ignored the university's. They had to batter the square peg into the round hole. I'd imagine that the tribunal would wonder why neither of them saw the flaws in their corrupt process.
6 Professor Gerry McCormac
What have you done about all the corruption, Gerry? Nothing? Yet you think I shouldn't be reinstated? Surely you should be begging me to return?
7 Kevin Clarke
He's going to have to explain how each flaw in the grievance procedure isn't a flaw. Rather him than me.
8 Professor Christine Hallett
What the fuck can she possibly say for herself? She has to be the queen of corruption. To pretend to everybody that she was our protector, when in reality she was the executioner; that takes a very special type of bastard. I wasn't her first victim either. She's a habitual corrupt bastard. Corruption is her hobby. Doesn't give a fuck about people's health. Money! Money! Money! I wish her a very slow painful death.
9 Jackie O'Neil
Jackie and Kathy are very similar. She's a loose cannon. Who knows what she could say? But I expect I will have evidence to prove it's a lie.
10 Dr Peter Kemp
This guy has been talking shite with impunity for so long, he won't know what else to do. He's in for an extremely hard time unless I'm seriously missing something.
11 Kathy McCabe
Nobody, and I mean nobody knows what on earth she might say on the witness stand. I fear there could be fake tears. When she is faced with the fact that she is a liar, the hearing may have to be suspended while she considers her response. During mediation, she refused to answer any questions, and she made an almighty fuss because I mentioned her dishonesty. Now she has more questions to answer. She won't be able to refuse to answer them. She has lied even more since mediation, and there is irrefutable evidence to prove it. "Isn't it true, Mrs McCabe that you told me, more than once, that honesty goes to the core of your very being? Then how do you explain this, and this, and this, and this, and..." Kathy described the mediation process as "the most difficult and deeply unpleasant experience of my working life." She will think it was a party compared with her time in the witness box. This won't be pretty, but it should be very entertaining.
12 Selina Gibb
I can only assume that someone is going to advise her what to say. I hope it's Eileen MacDonald.
13 Una Forsyth
Where do I begin? The university has definitely let Una down. They deliberately made her think I had made a complaint about her. It's almost unfair, but I have to treat her as what she is; a liar, and an extremely bad one at that.
14 Eileen MacDonald
Another one who has been led to believe that she is clever. This will be disastrous for Eileen. I suspect tears will flow if they allow this to proceed. She will be faced with her own stupidity and dishonesty. There's no escape. She has run out of lives. She depended on me for help, but I won't be helping her. She has dug herself into a very deep hole when she should have been keeping her mouth well and truly shut. No hope. And she'll probably blame Kathy for getting her into such a mess.
15 Eileen Schofield
My only fear with Eileen is that she'll come dressed as Mystic Meg and tell us the next day's horse results. No wait! That would be a good thing. A £1 roll-up on these 20 horses please, Mr Bookie!
16 David Black
He will have to check with Eric what he's allowed to say. He's shit scared of Kathy, so he will back her up to the hilt. But there's a rule at the tribunal. You have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That means he will have to make a choice, and I suspect the spineless twat will lie with everything he's got. A complete integrity vacuum; he'll say anything to keep Kathy happy. He'd sell his granny for a ha'penny. I don't intend to make it easy though.
17 Eric Hall
Eric will turn up full of confidence that he will eat me for breakfast. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. He will definitely not be saying that Kathy is a fucking bitch. I expect she will be a fucking Goddess when I cross examine him.
18 Karen Plouviez
Monday
Karen Stark - An Addiction to Fraud
I an earlier post, I spoke of the fraudulent document that Stirling Univesity gave to the Employment Tribunal to try to mislead them into thinking that all of my grievances against Kathy McCabe were thoroughly investigated. It would have been useful if Karen Stark and Eileen Schofield had produced this document at the time the alleged investigations took place. Not only would it have been useful; it would surely have been natural. Eileen is the university's Deputy Secretary on grade 10. She probably earns around £80,000 per year. Karen is on Grade 8, earning £44,000. This is not a pair of inexperienced juniors fresh from school. Any investigation would surely have been carefully planned and executed, and the findings would have been meticulously recorded BEFORE the outcome was decided. That's how I think most people would expect a proper investigation of their concerns to be carried out. Many of my complaints were of being bullied over several years, and the university promises that such complaints will be taken 'extremely seriously', so you would imagine there would be considerable evidence of this. Some of my complaints were of sex discrimination, and just days before I lodged my grievance, the Principal had written to every member of staff, including Eileen and Karen, emphasising how Stirling University was committed to diversity, and ensuring staff could work free from discrimination and victimisation. Karen even saw and acknowledged the protected disclosure I made to the Principal, in which I describe how senior management and HR had failed in its duty of care by allowing Kathy to continue bullying me to the serious detriment of my health.
In theory, my protected disclosure to the Principal should have raised alarm bells. The Principal should have been concerned that the university's committment, that she had just told us all about, didn't really exist, and that possibly HR and senior management had fooled her into thinking that there ever was such a committment. The question I feel the Principal should answer under oath is "Was she just innocently incompetent, or was she lying when she wrote to every single member of her staff?" I don't know if there is a third option, but she should have the opportunity to explain. I have asked for Christine Hallett to appear at the tribunal for cross examination, but the uni has objected to this. I feel that Christine should have the opportunity to clear her name, if she wants to. Christine is well known for claiming expenses, and I'm pretty sure the tribunal would fully refund any reasonable expenses she may incur in attending.
Obviously, if she was to tell the tribunal that she didn't lie to every single member of staff while being paid £250,000 a year to do so, then I would need her to explain her response to my protected disclosure. Her 'committment' seemed to have somewhat fallen short of what she had described to us all just days earlier. Could she have forgotten so quickly?
Much of what I said in my protected disclosure referred to meetings that took place with Karen Stark attending as the note taker. Most notable during these meetings was the behaviour of one Kathy McCabe. This was the Kathy that my team rarely got to see. It was the same Kathy who behaved in the same way during mediation. She acted like a spoilt little girl accused of stealing and eating all of the chocolate biscuits; screaming that it wasn't her, and blaming her innocent little brother, while the chocolate on her face and on her pretty dress told a different story. During mediation, she defiantly refused to answer any questions; she even left the room in a tantrum! At the time I felt embarrassed for Colin Sinclair; this was his friend who was behaving like a child. Ruth and I had genuinely believed him when he said he had always known her to be honest. We could never have anticipated that he would later make a statement saying that Kathy had answered my questions. Colin and Kathy are both IT managers at the uni. Graham Millar is another. All three are corrupt. David Gardiner is another IT manager at the uni. He is also close friends with Kathy and Colin. To my knowledge, he has played no part in this sham. However, he did stop speaking to me after I lodged my grievance against Kathy. The reason I mention David is because he came over to me and a friend I was with in a pub in Stirling one night, and threatened me; not physically, but with his powers of corruption. He had jumped to the wrong conclusion about me and my friend. He later apologised, blaming alcohol, but the damage was done. And he was so proud of his ability and willingness to abuse his powers that he wanted my friend to hear all about how he could ruin my career. The little shit was trying to scare me and embarrass me. He is an embarrassment to himself. I spent much of another evening with him once. Once again he was the worse for drink, and he described his hatred for his ex-wife's boyfriend, and what he planned to do if the opportunity arose. Many people will recognise David as a friendly, jovial bloke. I think it's a mask, and alcohol removes the mask to reveal the true David. With David, we probably wouldn't need lie detector tests; just alcohol!
So that's four IT managers as well as their boss, Mark Toole and former boss, Peter Kemp. Will the honest IT manager please stand up.
Back to Karen Stark, the note taker! Being involved with grievance and disciplinary procedures, I am always amazed at the accuracy of the notes taken by the note takers. The note taker is generally someone who is drawn from HR who has no prior involvement or emotional investment in the proceedings. The notes are not perfect by any means; that would be impossible without an audio recording device, but I'm genuinely surprised how accurate they are, given how much is said, the speed with which it is said, and that the topic being discussed may include terms the note taker may never have heard before. No meeting was ever stopped in order for the note taker to ask for something to be repeated, or to ask for time to catch up. It is a skill I truly wish I had. There might be little bits that are slightly wrong, but you can always tell that it was a genuine attempt to record what was said. The note taker then takes their handwritten notes, types them up, and files away both copies in electronic format. It's almost bulletproof.
There is but one exception to this, and that is when the note taker is Karen Stark. Karen was the note taker at a meeting attended by Mark Toole, Kathy, Lynn McDonald and my union representative, Dave Edgar. For most of the meeting, Kathy attacked me with malicious criticism. It was an act of desperation because at a previous meeting, Mark had told her that criticism should be delivered privately and it should be evidence based. She had agreed to that, but I could see that she was embarrassed at having basically been told by Mark that she was behaving like a bully. She was out for revenge, and that meant increasing the bullying. It was as if she had totally lost all sense of reason. The things she was criticising me about were things that any normal manager would have thanked me for. Much of this absurd criticism, and my response to it did not appear in Karen's notes.
I pointed out to Kathy that her arms were folded, and that she had told me she had complained to the uni that I had my arms folded during a meeting, and she thinks it's aggressive. She quickly unfolded her arms and said that she hadn't noticed. This didn't appear in Karen's notes.
I highlighted how she treats me differently from other team members, because when I had written to her saying that a colleague had physically assaulted me, she din't even reply. She then amazingly claimed that I had never told her of the assault. I reminded her that I had told her in an email. She denied it, just as she had denied receiving other emails from me. I offered to go and fetch the email, and asked her in advance what she would say once I showed it to her. This was because when I had shown her another email that she insisted she never received, she made up some stupid excuse about it. Dave asked her if she had known about the assault. She admitted that she had known. Dave asked her what she did about it. She said she didn't do anything about it. Dave asked her why she took no action, and she said it was because she wasn't present at the time of the assault.
Karen's notes do not refer to the fact that my manager thought that arm folding, which every single member of the team did, is so aggressive that it warranted a written complaint to the uni, while physical assault warranted no action whatsoever.
This is just a small sample of what Karen's notes do not include. This is particularly important because my grievance against Kathy included her behaviour at these meetings. But when Karen and Eileen came to investigate this complaint, the thorough investigation that I was promised turned out to be a complete sham. None of the witnesses were interviewed. There was a strange rule applied about witnesses. In order for a witness to be interviewed, their name had to appear in the documents that Kathy and I had lodged. But all of the attendees at those meetings were named in the documents, and so could have been interviewed anyway. So they were deliberately not interviewed. The entire investigation for my complaint consisted of Karen looking at her notes. Her notes didn't include anything worthy of complaint, so my complaint was rejected.
Karen's notes may originally have been accurate, but I didn't get to see them until after the grievance process. It is possible that she tampered with the notes to remove anything that was too incriminating for Kathy. I asked Karen for her handwritten version of the notes, but she said she destroyed them after she typed them up. all of the other note takers keep both versions.
Karen will have some explaining to do at the tribunal, about how these notes are so inaccurate, and why she destroyed her handwritten notes, and why the witnesses were not interviewed. This is in addition to her fraudulent investigation details document. She has produced a fraudulent document which, in turn, refers to another fraudulent document that she produced.
This amount and degree of fraud could mean a spell in the slammer for Karen, and I think she fully deserves it. Karen was already aware that her behaviour was damaging my health.
It will be interesting to see if Karen insists her notes are accurate, and that my account of these meetings that were attended by several witnesses, is false. Or will she once again claim that it was just a mistake? God knows where she is going with this, but she certainly has acquired a taste for fraud.
After the grievance decision was announced, Kevin Clarke described Karen as "highly professional". This raises very serious concerns about the University Secretary's judgement. Will he still be saying that when she's on her way to jail? Was Karen working to his instructions? Why is she still in her job where she could be doing this to more and more innocent employees? Is nobody at the uni calling for an investigation into her behaviour?
Regarding Karen's fraud, there could even be more. Watch this space...
In theory, my protected disclosure to the Principal should have raised alarm bells. The Principal should have been concerned that the university's committment, that she had just told us all about, didn't really exist, and that possibly HR and senior management had fooled her into thinking that there ever was such a committment. The question I feel the Principal should answer under oath is "Was she just innocently incompetent, or was she lying when she wrote to every single member of her staff?" I don't know if there is a third option, but she should have the opportunity to explain. I have asked for Christine Hallett to appear at the tribunal for cross examination, but the uni has objected to this. I feel that Christine should have the opportunity to clear her name, if she wants to. Christine is well known for claiming expenses, and I'm pretty sure the tribunal would fully refund any reasonable expenses she may incur in attending.
Obviously, if she was to tell the tribunal that she didn't lie to every single member of staff while being paid £250,000 a year to do so, then I would need her to explain her response to my protected disclosure. Her 'committment' seemed to have somewhat fallen short of what she had described to us all just days earlier. Could she have forgotten so quickly?
Much of what I said in my protected disclosure referred to meetings that took place with Karen Stark attending as the note taker. Most notable during these meetings was the behaviour of one Kathy McCabe. This was the Kathy that my team rarely got to see. It was the same Kathy who behaved in the same way during mediation. She acted like a spoilt little girl accused of stealing and eating all of the chocolate biscuits; screaming that it wasn't her, and blaming her innocent little brother, while the chocolate on her face and on her pretty dress told a different story. During mediation, she defiantly refused to answer any questions; she even left the room in a tantrum! At the time I felt embarrassed for Colin Sinclair; this was his friend who was behaving like a child. Ruth and I had genuinely believed him when he said he had always known her to be honest. We could never have anticipated that he would later make a statement saying that Kathy had answered my questions. Colin and Kathy are both IT managers at the uni. Graham Millar is another. All three are corrupt. David Gardiner is another IT manager at the uni. He is also close friends with Kathy and Colin. To my knowledge, he has played no part in this sham. However, he did stop speaking to me after I lodged my grievance against Kathy. The reason I mention David is because he came over to me and a friend I was with in a pub in Stirling one night, and threatened me; not physically, but with his powers of corruption. He had jumped to the wrong conclusion about me and my friend. He later apologised, blaming alcohol, but the damage was done. And he was so proud of his ability and willingness to abuse his powers that he wanted my friend to hear all about how he could ruin my career. The little shit was trying to scare me and embarrass me. He is an embarrassment to himself. I spent much of another evening with him once. Once again he was the worse for drink, and he described his hatred for his ex-wife's boyfriend, and what he planned to do if the opportunity arose. Many people will recognise David as a friendly, jovial bloke. I think it's a mask, and alcohol removes the mask to reveal the true David. With David, we probably wouldn't need lie detector tests; just alcohol!
So that's four IT managers as well as their boss, Mark Toole and former boss, Peter Kemp. Will the honest IT manager please stand up.
Back to Karen Stark, the note taker! Being involved with grievance and disciplinary procedures, I am always amazed at the accuracy of the notes taken by the note takers. The note taker is generally someone who is drawn from HR who has no prior involvement or emotional investment in the proceedings. The notes are not perfect by any means; that would be impossible without an audio recording device, but I'm genuinely surprised how accurate they are, given how much is said, the speed with which it is said, and that the topic being discussed may include terms the note taker may never have heard before. No meeting was ever stopped in order for the note taker to ask for something to be repeated, or to ask for time to catch up. It is a skill I truly wish I had. There might be little bits that are slightly wrong, but you can always tell that it was a genuine attempt to record what was said. The note taker then takes their handwritten notes, types them up, and files away both copies in electronic format. It's almost bulletproof.
There is but one exception to this, and that is when the note taker is Karen Stark. Karen was the note taker at a meeting attended by Mark Toole, Kathy, Lynn McDonald and my union representative, Dave Edgar. For most of the meeting, Kathy attacked me with malicious criticism. It was an act of desperation because at a previous meeting, Mark had told her that criticism should be delivered privately and it should be evidence based. She had agreed to that, but I could see that she was embarrassed at having basically been told by Mark that she was behaving like a bully. She was out for revenge, and that meant increasing the bullying. It was as if she had totally lost all sense of reason. The things she was criticising me about were things that any normal manager would have thanked me for. Much of this absurd criticism, and my response to it did not appear in Karen's notes.
I pointed out to Kathy that her arms were folded, and that she had told me she had complained to the uni that I had my arms folded during a meeting, and she thinks it's aggressive. She quickly unfolded her arms and said that she hadn't noticed. This didn't appear in Karen's notes.
I highlighted how she treats me differently from other team members, because when I had written to her saying that a colleague had physically assaulted me, she din't even reply. She then amazingly claimed that I had never told her of the assault. I reminded her that I had told her in an email. She denied it, just as she had denied receiving other emails from me. I offered to go and fetch the email, and asked her in advance what she would say once I showed it to her. This was because when I had shown her another email that she insisted she never received, she made up some stupid excuse about it. Dave asked her if she had known about the assault. She admitted that she had known. Dave asked her what she did about it. She said she didn't do anything about it. Dave asked her why she took no action, and she said it was because she wasn't present at the time of the assault.
Karen's notes do not refer to the fact that my manager thought that arm folding, which every single member of the team did, is so aggressive that it warranted a written complaint to the uni, while physical assault warranted no action whatsoever.
This is just a small sample of what Karen's notes do not include. This is particularly important because my grievance against Kathy included her behaviour at these meetings. But when Karen and Eileen came to investigate this complaint, the thorough investigation that I was promised turned out to be a complete sham. None of the witnesses were interviewed. There was a strange rule applied about witnesses. In order for a witness to be interviewed, their name had to appear in the documents that Kathy and I had lodged. But all of the attendees at those meetings were named in the documents, and so could have been interviewed anyway. So they were deliberately not interviewed. The entire investigation for my complaint consisted of Karen looking at her notes. Her notes didn't include anything worthy of complaint, so my complaint was rejected.
Karen's notes may originally have been accurate, but I didn't get to see them until after the grievance process. It is possible that she tampered with the notes to remove anything that was too incriminating for Kathy. I asked Karen for her handwritten version of the notes, but she said she destroyed them after she typed them up. all of the other note takers keep both versions.
Karen will have some explaining to do at the tribunal, about how these notes are so inaccurate, and why she destroyed her handwritten notes, and why the witnesses were not interviewed. This is in addition to her fraudulent investigation details document. She has produced a fraudulent document which, in turn, refers to another fraudulent document that she produced.
This amount and degree of fraud could mean a spell in the slammer for Karen, and I think she fully deserves it. Karen was already aware that her behaviour was damaging my health.
It will be interesting to see if Karen insists her notes are accurate, and that my account of these meetings that were attended by several witnesses, is false. Or will she once again claim that it was just a mistake? God knows where she is going with this, but she certainly has acquired a taste for fraud.
After the grievance decision was announced, Kevin Clarke described Karen as "highly professional". This raises very serious concerns about the University Secretary's judgement. Will he still be saying that when she's on her way to jail? Was Karen working to his instructions? Why is she still in her job where she could be doing this to more and more innocent employees? Is nobody at the uni calling for an investigation into her behaviour?
Regarding Karen's fraud, there could even be more. Watch this space...
Sunday
Justice or Revenge
In simple terms, justice comprises a set of rules that a group of people are bound by. If you break a rule, you receive a proportionate punishment. The punishment acts as a retribution and as a deterrent. The deterrent aspect acts as a form of protection to any potential victims of potential wrongdoers.
Revenge is personal. Punishment is less likely to be seen as proportionate.
Adultery
In some cultures, adultery is a crime that is punishable by death. The adulterer is buried up to their chest, and crowds of people throw rocks and stones at the adulterer's head until they die a slow, painful and humiliating death.
Rape victims can be considered adulterers too.
Proving adultery under Muslim law is difficult, as it requires four witnesses to the act of sexual intercourse. Each witness must have a good reputation for truthfulness. This makes me think that it is just an excuse for victimisation. Who on Earth would have adulterous sex in the presence of four people well known for their truthfulness? Surely there must be safer ways to spice up your sex life.
In the UK, adultery is not a crime, but it is grounds for divorce. Often the spouse of a repeat adulterer will choose to stick with the marriage. The UK has an online dating agency for adulterers. It boasts over half a million members.
Two different cultures have completely different views on adultery. Which one is correct? Is either correct? How would we measure correctness? A referendum?
Individuals may be devastated to discover that their partner has been unfaithful. They might feel that justice isn't enough, and seek revenge. They may even kill their partner and then themselves. Would society have sympathy for such an individual, or their partner? When they married, they knew there was no law against adultery, and although they vowed to remain married until death, that is not enforcable.
Honour killings
Honour killings are often connected to accusations of adultery. Honour killings continue to be legal in parts of the world.
Part of article 340 of the Penal Code of Jordan states that "he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty."
In Syria, Article 548 states that "He who catches his wife or one of his ascendants, descendants or sister committing adultery or illegitimate sexual acts with another and he killed or injured one or both of them benefits from an exemption of penalty."
Bad justice
Consider the situation where several wrongdoers perform punishable acts against a victim. Due to corruption, there is injustice, and instead of the wrongdoers being punished, the victim is punished with devastating effect. The wrongdoers and the corrupt justice deliverers are aware of the devastation they've caused the victim. How would society react to the victim causing devastation to one or more of the wrongdoers? What if the victim's act is seen to be way out of proportion to the acts of the wrongdoers? The victim may consider that the effect of the act is more important than the act itself, and he wants at least one of the wrongdoers to suffer at least the same amount of devastation as he did, and to bitterly regret their wrongful acts every day for the rest of their lives. They may have carried out their wrongful act on a whim, for a bit of fun. The victim would want them to desperately wish they could go back in time and make a different choice. How much sympathy would society have for such a wrongdoer?
The fear of revenge is a form of deterrent, but revenge is a very poor and dangerous substitute for proper justice. Justice not only protects the innocent, it can protect the guilty too by ensuring that the punishment is proportionate to the crime. How would the devastated wrongdoer feel about those who delivered the injustice that left them vulnerable to the disproportionate acts of revenge?
Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder
In an earlier post, David Yamada describes Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder (PTED). "Those with PTED were hard working and mentally healthy people until a
triggering event destroyed their core values and shattered their basic beliefs. People feel wronged, humiliated and that some injustice has been done to them."
According to psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Linden, those with PTED suffer from intrusive thoughts and memories long after the triggering event, phobicly avoid places related to the event and are pathologically consumed by an intense desire for revenge.
"The critical part is this [long] lasting and very intensive emotional embitterment, a mixture of depression and helplessness and hopelessness. It's a very nasty emotion."
Dr Linden estimates that 1-2% of people become so stressed out by the triggering event that "they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances."
Dr. Linden suggested that loving, normal individuals who suddenly snap, killing either their family or coworkers and then themselves may actually be suffering from post-traumatic embitterment syndrome.
One wonders how much violent crime has been triggered by bad justice.
Detection and deterrent
Potential wrongdoers are also deterred if they believe there is a great risk of detection. Improved forensic science, including DNA evidence and an increase in CCTV must be putting off some would be criminals.
What is the purpose of punishment? It is believed that most people in the UK think that the death penalty should be brought back for murder. This suggests to me that they want revenge, because all the evidence shows that murder rates are higher where the death penalty exists. Murderers either don't think they will be caught or they don't care if they are executed. On the other hand, the threat of the death penalty would act as an excellent deterrent for crimes that have a high detection rate, such as illegal parking, and putting a washing out to dry on a Sunday.
Revenge is personal. Punishment is less likely to be seen as proportionate.
Adultery
In some cultures, adultery is a crime that is punishable by death. The adulterer is buried up to their chest, and crowds of people throw rocks and stones at the adulterer's head until they die a slow, painful and humiliating death.
Rape victims can be considered adulterers too.
Proving adultery under Muslim law is difficult, as it requires four witnesses to the act of sexual intercourse. Each witness must have a good reputation for truthfulness. This makes me think that it is just an excuse for victimisation. Who on Earth would have adulterous sex in the presence of four people well known for their truthfulness? Surely there must be safer ways to spice up your sex life.
In the UK, adultery is not a crime, but it is grounds for divorce. Often the spouse of a repeat adulterer will choose to stick with the marriage. The UK has an online dating agency for adulterers. It boasts over half a million members.
Two different cultures have completely different views on adultery. Which one is correct? Is either correct? How would we measure correctness? A referendum?
Individuals may be devastated to discover that their partner has been unfaithful. They might feel that justice isn't enough, and seek revenge. They may even kill their partner and then themselves. Would society have sympathy for such an individual, or their partner? When they married, they knew there was no law against adultery, and although they vowed to remain married until death, that is not enforcable.
Honour killings
Honour killings are often connected to accusations of adultery. Honour killings continue to be legal in parts of the world.
Part of article 340 of the Penal Code of Jordan states that "he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty."
In Syria, Article 548 states that "He who catches his wife or one of his ascendants, descendants or sister committing adultery or illegitimate sexual acts with another and he killed or injured one or both of them benefits from an exemption of penalty."
Bad justice
Consider the situation where several wrongdoers perform punishable acts against a victim. Due to corruption, there is injustice, and instead of the wrongdoers being punished, the victim is punished with devastating effect. The wrongdoers and the corrupt justice deliverers are aware of the devastation they've caused the victim. How would society react to the victim causing devastation to one or more of the wrongdoers? What if the victim's act is seen to be way out of proportion to the acts of the wrongdoers? The victim may consider that the effect of the act is more important than the act itself, and he wants at least one of the wrongdoers to suffer at least the same amount of devastation as he did, and to bitterly regret their wrongful acts every day for the rest of their lives. They may have carried out their wrongful act on a whim, for a bit of fun. The victim would want them to desperately wish they could go back in time and make a different choice. How much sympathy would society have for such a wrongdoer?
The fear of revenge is a form of deterrent, but revenge is a very poor and dangerous substitute for proper justice. Justice not only protects the innocent, it can protect the guilty too by ensuring that the punishment is proportionate to the crime. How would the devastated wrongdoer feel about those who delivered the injustice that left them vulnerable to the disproportionate acts of revenge?
Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder
In an earlier post, David Yamada describes Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder (PTED). "Those with PTED were hard working and mentally healthy people until a
triggering event destroyed their core values and shattered their basic beliefs. People feel wronged, humiliated and that some injustice has been done to them."
According to psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Linden, those with PTED suffer from intrusive thoughts and memories long after the triggering event, phobicly avoid places related to the event and are pathologically consumed by an intense desire for revenge.
"The critical part is this [long] lasting and very intensive emotional embitterment, a mixture of depression and helplessness and hopelessness. It's a very nasty emotion."
Dr Linden estimates that 1-2% of people become so stressed out by the triggering event that "they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances."
Dr. Linden suggested that loving, normal individuals who suddenly snap, killing either their family or coworkers and then themselves may actually be suffering from post-traumatic embitterment syndrome.
One wonders how much violent crime has been triggered by bad justice.
Detection and deterrent
Potential wrongdoers are also deterred if they believe there is a great risk of detection. Improved forensic science, including DNA evidence and an increase in CCTV must be putting off some would be criminals.
What is the purpose of punishment? It is believed that most people in the UK think that the death penalty should be brought back for murder. This suggests to me that they want revenge, because all the evidence shows that murder rates are higher where the death penalty exists. Murderers either don't think they will be caught or they don't care if they are executed. On the other hand, the threat of the death penalty would act as an excellent deterrent for crimes that have a high detection rate, such as illegal parking, and putting a washing out to dry on a Sunday.
Saturday
Eric Hall - Brown Nose
Ever since Kathy became the team manager around 1998, she began filling just about every vacant position either with a friend or with someone she knew. I can only think that she did this in the hope that those people would be beholding to her, and support her. That's not to say that none of them were any good, but there were certainly some who could not have been selected on merit. Almost all of the people who she took on by this method were women; the one exception that I can think of being Eric Hall who happened to be a friend of an existing female colleague, Suzie, who in turn was a close friend of Kathy's, and who Kathy chose to include on the interview panel for Eric's interview. This was a new post that Kathy created for a Project Manager, and it was slightly odd because we already had the luxury of a full time Project Manager. Added to that; whenever a high profile project came up, Kathy would take it for herself to manage. We all felt that the Project Managers were under occupied, while for years I was doing the work of one and a half employees.
This recruitment method resulted in the formation of a clique, but it also created a millstone round Kathy's neck. She's a very poor people manager, and she had only made things worse for herself by creating a team that was difficult to manage. Those in the clique felt it was their right to receive favourable treatment, and to keep them sweet, Kathy gave them it. On the other hand, at one point it felt like 80% of the work was done by 20% of the team; Jaana, me, Marco and Bruce - all non clique members. Later, Stephen, Suzie, Paul and David did more than their fair share.
Kathy desperately wanted to be liked, but that shouldn't be the main goal of a manager. Ironically some of the clique strongly disliked her, and in the case of Eric; hated her. "I hate the fucking bitch!" he told me one day while he was with me and Lynn. Just as ironic, Eric also intensely disliked Suzie after she divorced David Gardiner; his chum from schooldays. It became an obsession with him, and he would work it in to just about every conversation.
Lynn had made Eric aware of a meeting that Kathy and I had with Mark Toole where Kathy had behaved like a lunatic. She had gone on an astonishing rant where she desperately invented reasons to criticise me. This was because at a similar meeting a few weeks earlier, Mark had got her to agree to stop criticising me unjustly and publicly. My union rep who witnessed it, strongly agreed that it was serious bullying. He advised Mark to take action to stop it, and he made him aware of Kathy's mistreatment of a former colleague.
Although Eric hated Kathy, he knew which side his bread was buttered on. He defended Kathy's behaviour and said that she was entitled to behave that way because I had submitted a grievance against her. He then added that if I was ever to submit a grievance against him, he would kick my "fucking" head in. I commented on his aggression, and he quickly apologised, but he'd shown just how irrational he was on the topic. His experience in the team was the complete opposite of mine. Kathy treated him with dignity; he was never overworked, or anywhere near it; he was allowed to attend training courses and conferences; and there's probably more that I don't know about. I told him that during my grievance, I was asked what outcome I wanted, and I said that I wanted Kathy removed from the team. If that were to have happened (and it SHOULD have happened), it would have been a shock to Eric's system to have a new manager that treats everyone equally, and expects a day's work from him. A new manager might even decide that there just isn't enough work to justify having two full time Project Managers, and that the team needed people with development skills. Every year, Kathy would present the team with a list, several pages long, of development work that had been requested, and every year we barely scratched the surface of that list. Mark Toole got rid of a whole team to meet his staff budget cut. In my opinion it would have made far more sense to have looked at each role in the department and considered what it was actually accomplishing. I know that Lynn and Eric had both been nervous about the cuts. And how could Mark justify getting rid of Alison, Oron and Rob while keeping Eileen, Jackie and Selina?
David had told Eric about how Jackie had screamed at me a couple of weeks earlier. I said it was ridiculous, and Eric tried to play it down by saying something like "That's just how Jackie is. You're never going to change her." I said that Kathy had had 12 years to do something about her. He again defended Kathy by saying that she had attempted to sort Jackie out a couple of years earlier when Jackie had been sending out overly aggressive and overly technical emails to other (non technical) teams. Kathy had told Jackie not to send out any more emails without checking with her first. Jackie then went off sick on work related stress because of it, so Kathy backed off and dropped the matter.
There was an improper, unhealthy work relationship between Kathy and Eric. The deal was that they would support each other even when they were wrong or being dishonest. One time at a full team meeting, Eric, who is non technical, made a suggestion. It would have been an excellent suggestion except for the fact that it was technically impossible. I pointed out why it couldn't work, and how if we attempted it, we would simply cause ourselves more work. Kathy completely ignored me, and said it was a good idea, and that we would implement it. This was in a room full of technical experts. It wasn't rocket science, but nobody backed me up. Two minutes after the meeting, Eric came to me privately to say that after he had thought about it, he realised his suggestion wouldn't work. It was never mentioned again, but I was left to look like an idiot.
On another occasion, Kathy had sent me a cheeky email criticising me for not knowing the time in lieu procedure. She was wrong, and this was just more unjust criticism. I'd had enough of it, and I booked a meeting with her to discuss her behaviour towards me. On my way to Kathy's room, I asked Eric what he understood the TIL procedure to be. He said there was no procedure, and that it was taken on trust. I asked Kathy to explain her criticism. She said that I must follow the correct procedure like everyone else, and she said that Eric always does it correctly. I told her that Eric had just told me that there was no procedure. She quickly changed the subject. It transpired that I was the only person following the correct procedure because I was the only person she had told to follow it. I suspect she was planning to get Eric to say that there was a procedure, but I had accidently spoilt her plan. The reason Kathy had asked me to follow a TIL procedure was because Jackie had been spreading rumours claiming that I was taking TIL I wasn't entitled to.
It demonstrates how warped Kathy's mind is that she would unjustly criticise me for something she has dishonestly invented like not following a non existant procedure when I am the only one following the correct procedure for something as trivial as time in lieu, while someone like Eileen MacDonald can repeatedly breech university security procedures, and rather than discipline or criticise Eileen, she would rather change the procedure and reduce security. It's no wonder she desperately avoided discussing her behaviour. How could she possibly explain that?
Kathy also inappropriately involved Eric in matters that were private. For example she wanted him to attend my return to work interview. When I asked her if she did that with other employees, she told me it was none of my business, yet she wanted Eric to know all about MY business.
On another occasion, there had been a minor issue with a computer system. Normally she wouldn't have cared much about the issue. However, she wrongly thought that I was at fault, and decided to criticise me. She had criticised me a number of times before, only to find out she was wrong. This time she was sure. It wasn't sufficient to pop into my room and have a quiet word. She made a big song and dance about it, and sent a lengthy email. In order to gain further satisfaction, she copied her email to Eric, even though it had nothing to do with him. Sad to say; she was wrong again! Unlike Kathy who waited until after the event to appear clever and say that I should have anticipated the problem, I had actually anticipated the problem and done everything in my power to prevent it, and had even worked late doing so. Furthermore, I could prove it. Just like every other time she criticised me inappropriately, no apology was forthcoming. Kathy doesn't do apologies.
Kathy took part in a training course that was to last more than a year. Eric was one of four team members required to answer questions in order to rate Kathy as a manager. Kathy was rated very badly. She received scores of 2 and 3 while the others on the course scored 7s and 8s. Eric told me she received the worst scores that anybody had ever received on the course. When Kathy found out, she met with the four team members, and tried to persuade them that they hadn't understood the questions. They said that they had felt intimidated by this. At the end of her course, the same four were asked to answer the questions again. Eric admitted that he had lied in order to give Kathy better scores than she deserved, just for a quiet life. This angered Jaana who also answered the questions, because she felt the whole exercise was a waste of time if they weren't honest. It was worse than a waste of time, it produced inaccurate data that was intended to improve Kathy's performance.
Eric was one of he people that Karen Stark and Eileen Schofield interviewed as part of their fake investigation for my grievance. Some of those interviewed had denied things they had done to me, including things done in front of a dozen or more witnesses. Eileen took their denials to be proof that I had just made it up. In a fake investigation, that's what you do; you certainly don't ask the witnesses, and you don't ask the the complainant if they have evidence. You also ignore the fact that Kathy had already admitted that she was fully aware that the incidents happened, and that she had signed a document saying so. Eric went a stage further and made stuff up to help Kathy in her hour of need. He said that he felt I had "a problem with women". In the fake investigation, Eric wasn't asked to give any examples of this problem he felt I had with women. Eric knows I don't have a problem with women. When I first read his statement, I didn't see the point in him saying it. It wasn't something that Kathy had ever suggested. I found out later when I saw the notes of Kathy's meeting with Karen and Eileen. It was Karen Stark who, completely out of the blue, had planted the suggestion in Kathy's mind. Kathy took the opportunity to run with it. No doubt she passed the suggestion to Eric and Eileen MacDonald. The suggestion was then used in an attempt to get me sacked, and by the time Una Forsyth made her statement for the disciplinary investigation, the story had grown arms and legs, and I "only got on with two out of the eleven women in the team". Of course, in a fake investigation you don't ask those other nine women if they get on with me, and if not, why not. You also wouldn't ask Una why she cooked me a meal and asked me to be her Facebook friend when she didn't get on with me. Una didn't cook Eric a meal. They weren't friends on Facebook, and I don't think she showed him her photo of her stepping out of the shower with just a towel to hide her modesty. Maybe she has a problem with men?
Eric said "Kathy treats everyone professionally and equally", and that she had "an excellent way of managing the team". He didn't say anything about him "hating the fucking bitch" or how he only scored her 3 out of 10 then lied just for a "quiet life". If there was an award for the team's brownest nose, Eric's the winner!
To be continued...
Sunday
Gerry McCormac - Corrupt or What?
Gerry McCormac
Gerry McCormac became Stirling University's Principal in May 2010. He described the university as one of the most respected in the UK. He said his focus would be on providing leadership and "getting the best out of people".
In accordance with the university's grievance procedures, I wrote to Professor McCormac in September 2010 and sent copies of my letter to Alan Simpson, Chair of the University Court, and Dr James Naughtie, University Chancellor. I alerted them to the widespread corruption that exists within the university's senior management.
You might expect that someone who agreed to take up such a responsible position, and who accepts around a quarter of a million pounds a year to perform his duties, would be horrified to learn of this and would be eager to rid the university of corruption as a matter of priority. You might also expect that he would be eager to speak with me to obtain as much information as possible in order for him to fully understand and deal with the very serious problem at Stirling University.
However, you would be wrong. Professor McCormac decided that it would be best to sweep the issue under the carpet.
It is ironic that a university Cleaner earning around £15,000 a year would probably be sacked for sweeping dirt under the carpet. Cleaners are expected to work with integrity; Principals and senior management are not.
Corrupt or what? I see no evidence to suggest that Gerry is anything but corrupt.
Shame on you, Gerry!
Oh dear! Hot off the press; Gerry has been appointed by Education Secretary, Mike Russell to head up a review of teachers' pay and conditions. Labour and Liberal Democrats are worried that the review may be a sham, and that this is just a cost cutting exercise. With Gerry at the helm, I believe they have good reason to be worried.
Gerry is aware that Mark Toole had decided that I should be dismissed because he couldn't deal properly with my grievance against Kathy McCabe's bullying behaviour. It is likely that Kathy's husband, Liam, being the Finance Director was also a factor. I had made protected disclosures about the university's failure to comply with its legal obligations, so the heat was on for the Uni. Mark's lack of integrity caused him to call in well known 'arse licker', Graham Millar, to carry out a sham investigation which was to produce a report recommending a disciplinary hearing be held. Mark would have told Graham not to allow the facts to get in the way of the required report.
Despite all of the evidence that made it obvious I was innocent, Mark dismissed me, and other corrupt directors upheld his decision.
Immediately prior to this, Mark had arranged for Deputy Secretary, Eileen Schofield to carry out a sham investigation relating to my allegations that I had been bullied by my manager, Kathy McCabe, for several years, including bullying that took place in Mark's presence. Amazingly, despite all of the evidence, Eileen produced a report stating that I had not been bullied, but that I had bullied my manager. At appeal, University Secretary, Kevin Clarke upheld her incredible decision.
Gerry knew about all of this when he shrugged off my complaints of corruption. Interestingly, he offered no evidence to refute my claims that senior management is corrupt.
Not satisfied with being paid £250,000 a year and ruining an innocent man's career, Gerry will be hoping to be recommended for inclusion in the honours list for carrying out this review. In my opinion, he should be in jail.
Gerry has a wife and three sons. I suppose he is 'lucky' not to have a conscience.
I suppose it's unfortunate from Gerry's and other corrupt people's point of view, that we now have the internet. The world is becoming more transparent. Corrupt dinosaurs, like Gerry, will hopefully become a feature of the past.
My parents were born more than 70 years before most people had even heard of the internet, but that didn't stop them from raising me to be honest, hard working and ethical. Gerry is the type of person they warned me not to mix with.
I feel sorry for his sons who have been deprived of a normal non corrupt life in which they could achieve their goals based on their own genuine desires and honest abilities.
15 April 2011
He's not been in charge for a year yet, but as well as bullying and corruption, Gerry is now proud to add fraud to his list of skills.
Friday
Legal Action Imminent?
A little bird tells me that a Stirling University employee is considering legal action against me and my blog.
I can confirm that I have received no correspondence from anyone claiming that my blog contains any inaccuracies. I confirm also that I have written to certain individuals asking if there is anything I've said that they dispute, and to date this has not brought any response.
I hereby extend my offer to anyone who thinks there may be something inaccurate in my blog. Please let me know what it is, and if you can support your claim with evidence, then that would be useful to have.
For example, if you are University Secretary, Kevin Clarke and you think I've unfairly criticised you for having dismissed my appeal against Deputy Secretary, Eileen Schofield's handling of my grievance, then it would be useful if you were to respond to my questions dated 15 November 2010, when I asked for the facts on which Ms Schofield allegedly based her decision. I also asked if Ms Schofield, who was administratively supported by HR Partner, Karen Stark, gave me the opportunity to state my case. You described Ms Stark as "highly professional".
The University's Grievance Procedure states: At the grievance hearing, both sides i.e. the employee raising the grievance and the party against whom the grievance has been raised, will be given the opportunity to state their case.
It also states: Once all the details of the case have been heard, the chair of the hearing will decide on the outcome based on the facts of the case made available to them.
What's very clear and uncontested is that THEORETICALLY, Karen Stark is highly professional. There can be no doubt that she fully understands the university procedures to such an extent that she is prepared to communicate them in what could be regarded as a highly condescending manner to a less expert employee who seeks clarification on just how thorough the procedure is intended to be. There can be no doubt that Ms Stark definitely knows that the procedure is required to be carried out EQUITABLY and that allegations are to be investigated THOROUGHLY.
Although I do not dispute Ms Stark's knowledge of the requirements of the grievance and disciplinary procedures, I very strongly dispute that she ensured that those procedures were carried out in accordance with that knowledge. I can confidently say that Ms Stark's approach to these procedures was as totally corrupt. This would mean that all employees and former employees who have suffered at the hands of both yourself and Ms Stark should have their individual cases reviewed.
Both my representative and I had indicated to you that procedures had not been carried out equitably or thoroughly, and we gave several examples of this. Therefore I would like you to answer my questions from November 2010, and I would also like you to explain how your claim that there is no evidence of procedural flaw can be consistent with what was described to you in my letter of appeal as well as what was described to you during the hearing.
Here's a helpful reminder of the questions I would like you to answer.
You told the Employment Tribunal that the allegations I made in my grievance were investigated and rejected. For each allegation in my grievance, please state
(a) The allegation
(b) The date the allegation was investigated.
(c) The name(s) of the investigator(s)
(d) The form of the investigation, including the names of any witnesses interviewed, documents referred to, etc.
(e) The facts used in deciding to reject the allegation.
(f) Before the allegation was rejected, please state whether or not I was given an opportunity to provide further evidence to support the allegation, and if not, why not?
You also told them that Ms Schofield upheld Ms McCabe's grievance against me. For each allegation in her grievance, please state
(a) The allegation
(b) The date the allegation was investigated.
(c) The name(s) of the investigator(s)
(d) The form of the investigation, including the names of any witnesses interviewed, documents referred to, etc.
(e) Was it decided the allegation was true or was it rejected.
(f) The facts used to come to that decision.
(g) If it was decided that the allegation was true, was I given an opportunity to provide evidence to refute the allegation, and if not, why not?
You referred to the report produced by Ms Schofield. The report states that I was asked at the hearing to present my case. Do you now accept that I was asked to present a brief summary of my case only?
Any reputable employer would be only too happy to provide this information. Ms Stark of Chisholm Avenue, Stirling, was aware of her obligation to investigate my allegations thoroughly, but deliberately failed to fulfil her obligation. Instead she used the process to cause bad feeling between me and my colleagues. She was also aware that I was entitled to present my case, but she attended the hearing and knew that I was only allowed to briefly summarise my case. She saw Eileen Schofield's report which falsely states I was asked to present my case. She was aware that Kathy McCabe had presented a pack of lies at her hearing, but just allowed it. She attended interviews with colleagues who supported my case, but none of their statements were reflected in the report. She avoided interviewing important witnesses, including current employees, one of whom I had written to her with their name. All of the irrefutable evidence I presented was completely ignored, and Kathy wasn't even asked to respond to my allegations. The report also falsely states that Kathy was able to point evidence that supported her allegations and refuted mine. Yet Mr Clarke says he sees no flaw in the procedure.
Ms Stark then ensured that the disciplinary procedure was equally biased. She has absolutely no self respect. While she did all of this, she was fully aware that I had been suffering from stress for several years due to Kathy's bullying, and she knew some of the effects the stress was having on me. She also knew that my work was one of the few things that helped to reduce the stress. She also knew how Kathy's behaviour had damaged another employee's health. She is a moral vacuum. God knows what motivates her. She is pure evil!
I intend to have the corrupt bully supporter, Mr Clarke removed from his £150,000 a year job, and replaced by someone with integrity.
By achieving this, it is my sincere hope that, long after I'm dead, people in positions of power will think more carefully before abusing their power in order to protect bullies and to abuse innocent individuals. No doubt Mr Clarke never gave the slightest thought to any personal risk he may have been taking. As far as he was concerned, there was none. He probably still thinks that! He had managed to get rid of Kathy McCabe's previous victim without suffering any personal consequences. He certainly didn't give a damn what would happen to me. I was just an extremely dedicated, hard working employee; easily disposable.
My blog is possibly causing him some discomfort because it makes it fairly clear that he is corrupt, and I've been reliably told that, away from the university, his acquaintances had no idea what he's really like. His name is one of the most common Google searches that lead to my blog.
Watch this space...
Stirling Uni guilty of serious fraud
I can confirm that I have received no correspondence from anyone claiming that my blog contains any inaccuracies. I confirm also that I have written to certain individuals asking if there is anything I've said that they dispute, and to date this has not brought any response.
I hereby extend my offer to anyone who thinks there may be something inaccurate in my blog. Please let me know what it is, and if you can support your claim with evidence, then that would be useful to have.
For example, if you are University Secretary, Kevin Clarke and you think I've unfairly criticised you for having dismissed my appeal against Deputy Secretary, Eileen Schofield's handling of my grievance, then it would be useful if you were to respond to my questions dated 15 November 2010, when I asked for the facts on which Ms Schofield allegedly based her decision. I also asked if Ms Schofield, who was administratively supported by HR Partner, Karen Stark, gave me the opportunity to state my case. You described Ms Stark as "highly professional".
The University's Grievance Procedure states: At the grievance hearing, both sides i.e. the employee raising the grievance and the party against whom the grievance has been raised, will be given the opportunity to state their case.
It also states: Once all the details of the case have been heard, the chair of the hearing will decide on the outcome based on the facts of the case made available to them.
What's very clear and uncontested is that THEORETICALLY, Karen Stark is highly professional. There can be no doubt that she fully understands the university procedures to such an extent that she is prepared to communicate them in what could be regarded as a highly condescending manner to a less expert employee who seeks clarification on just how thorough the procedure is intended to be. There can be no doubt that Ms Stark definitely knows that the procedure is required to be carried out EQUITABLY and that allegations are to be investigated THOROUGHLY.
Although I do not dispute Ms Stark's knowledge of the requirements of the grievance and disciplinary procedures, I very strongly dispute that she ensured that those procedures were carried out in accordance with that knowledge. I can confidently say that Ms Stark's approach to these procedures was as totally corrupt. This would mean that all employees and former employees who have suffered at the hands of both yourself and Ms Stark should have their individual cases reviewed.
Both my representative and I had indicated to you that procedures had not been carried out equitably or thoroughly, and we gave several examples of this. Therefore I would like you to answer my questions from November 2010, and I would also like you to explain how your claim that there is no evidence of procedural flaw can be consistent with what was described to you in my letter of appeal as well as what was described to you during the hearing.
Here's a helpful reminder of the questions I would like you to answer.
You told the Employment Tribunal that the allegations I made in my grievance were investigated and rejected. For each allegation in my grievance, please state
(a) The allegation
(b) The date the allegation was investigated.
(c) The name(s) of the investigator(s)
(d) The form of the investigation, including the names of any witnesses interviewed, documents referred to, etc.
(e) The facts used in deciding to reject the allegation.
(f) Before the allegation was rejected, please state whether or not I was given an opportunity to provide further evidence to support the allegation, and if not, why not?
You also told them that Ms Schofield upheld Ms McCabe's grievance against me. For each allegation in her grievance, please state
(a) The allegation
(b) The date the allegation was investigated.
(c) The name(s) of the investigator(s)
(d) The form of the investigation, including the names of any witnesses interviewed, documents referred to, etc.
(e) Was it decided the allegation was true or was it rejected.
(f) The facts used to come to that decision.
(g) If it was decided that the allegation was true, was I given an opportunity to provide evidence to refute the allegation, and if not, why not?
You referred to the report produced by Ms Schofield. The report states that I was asked at the hearing to present my case. Do you now accept that I was asked to present a brief summary of my case only?
Any reputable employer would be only too happy to provide this information. Ms Stark of Chisholm Avenue, Stirling, was aware of her obligation to investigate my allegations thoroughly, but deliberately failed to fulfil her obligation. Instead she used the process to cause bad feeling between me and my colleagues. She was also aware that I was entitled to present my case, but she attended the hearing and knew that I was only allowed to briefly summarise my case. She saw Eileen Schofield's report which falsely states I was asked to present my case. She was aware that Kathy McCabe had presented a pack of lies at her hearing, but just allowed it. She attended interviews with colleagues who supported my case, but none of their statements were reflected in the report. She avoided interviewing important witnesses, including current employees, one of whom I had written to her with their name. All of the irrefutable evidence I presented was completely ignored, and Kathy wasn't even asked to respond to my allegations. The report also falsely states that Kathy was able to point evidence that supported her allegations and refuted mine. Yet Mr Clarke says he sees no flaw in the procedure.
Ms Stark then ensured that the disciplinary procedure was equally biased. She has absolutely no self respect. While she did all of this, she was fully aware that I had been suffering from stress for several years due to Kathy's bullying, and she knew some of the effects the stress was having on me. She also knew that my work was one of the few things that helped to reduce the stress. She also knew how Kathy's behaviour had damaged another employee's health. She is a moral vacuum. God knows what motivates her. She is pure evil!
I intend to have the corrupt bully supporter, Mr Clarke removed from his £150,000 a year job, and replaced by someone with integrity.
By achieving this, it is my sincere hope that, long after I'm dead, people in positions of power will think more carefully before abusing their power in order to protect bullies and to abuse innocent individuals. No doubt Mr Clarke never gave the slightest thought to any personal risk he may have been taking. As far as he was concerned, there was none. He probably still thinks that! He had managed to get rid of Kathy McCabe's previous victim without suffering any personal consequences. He certainly didn't give a damn what would happen to me. I was just an extremely dedicated, hard working employee; easily disposable.
My blog is possibly causing him some discomfort because it makes it fairly clear that he is corrupt, and I've been reliably told that, away from the university, his acquaintances had no idea what he's really like. His name is one of the most common Google searches that lead to my blog.
Watch this space...
Stirling Uni guilty of serious fraud
Wednesday
Corruption at Stirling University
I have been contacted by a number of employees and former employees with supportive messages. Thank you. I appreciate it.
I have also been contacted by people who are, or have been, in similar situations to my own, and it appears that the Human Resources department at Stirling is seen to be very unhelpful when approached by employees with genuine concerns. One described HR as "completely crooked".
Just as I did, I think most people would naively think that HR exists to protect and support employees. What I've discovered is that HR's primary role is to protect management; no matter how badly management behaves. Although HR produce documents stating that bullying will be taken extremely seriously, you should be aware that that is not the case, and that if you report a member of management of any wrong doing, you run the real risk of quickly being the subject of disciplinary procedings, and no matter how innocent you may be, if management wants rid of you, they will get rid of you. You may think they would need evidence, but you would be wrong. Unfortunately the unions have no power to stop them from doing that either.
So what should someone do if they are being ill treated by their manager? My only advice is be careful. Keep notes and written communications of all incidents of ill treatment. You might even want to consider making audio recordings when you think you might be about to be ill treated. I wouldn't rely too much on witnesses because they may be unwilling to testify against their manager, no matter how well you think you get on with them.
A word of caution to those who wish to contact me. I know that any communication between me and the university is being intercepted by management. I strongly suggest you do not use your university account when writing to me. If you wish to write to me, you can post a comment here. Please indicate if it's not for publication. Alternatively you can email me from a non university email account.
I have also been contacted by people who are, or have been, in similar situations to my own, and it appears that the Human Resources department at Stirling is seen to be very unhelpful when approached by employees with genuine concerns. One described HR as "completely crooked".
Just as I did, I think most people would naively think that HR exists to protect and support employees. What I've discovered is that HR's primary role is to protect management; no matter how badly management behaves. Although HR produce documents stating that bullying will be taken extremely seriously, you should be aware that that is not the case, and that if you report a member of management of any wrong doing, you run the real risk of quickly being the subject of disciplinary procedings, and no matter how innocent you may be, if management wants rid of you, they will get rid of you. You may think they would need evidence, but you would be wrong. Unfortunately the unions have no power to stop them from doing that either.
So what should someone do if they are being ill treated by their manager? My only advice is be careful. Keep notes and written communications of all incidents of ill treatment. You might even want to consider making audio recordings when you think you might be about to be ill treated. I wouldn't rely too much on witnesses because they may be unwilling to testify against their manager, no matter how well you think you get on with them.
A word of caution to those who wish to contact me. I know that any communication between me and the university is being intercepted by management. I strongly suggest you do not use your university account when writing to me. If you wish to write to me, you can post a comment here. Please indicate if it's not for publication. Alternatively you can email me from a non university email account.
Monday
Inequality
As part of the University's blurb that they serve to the public, they claim to be committed to equality and opposed to discrimination.
That commitment falls far short of my own.
Several years ago, I received a very good offer to join another company. Former Director, Tony Osbourne heard about it and offered me a raise of roughly 50% in order to retain my services. Although I loved my job, I turned down his offer because he was unwilling to offer the same raise to my colleague, Jaana who did the same job as me, and whose performance I felt was much better than mine. I couldn't work alongside her knowing that I was earning 50% more than she did while she was worth more than me.
It was only when I was about to hand in my notice that Tony agreed to offer Jaana the same raise.
Since then I witnessed extraordinary inequality, and especially by Kathy McCabe. Unfortunately, my colleagues (including Jaana) could see that I was being deliberately disadvantaged by Kathy, but they were unwilling to speak out about it.
One of the first things that Kathy wrote in her grievance was "I treat the team fairly and consistently". It's an unbelievable claim that would be very funny, if it wasn't so serious. The only thing consistent about Kathy was her unfairness and how she would give special treatment to her friends.
She also made this claim to me during a meeting I had with her after she had turned down my request to attend a conference for the sixth year running. That was the second lie she made on the subject. Her first lie was made publicly to the entire team in an email. She unbelievably claimed that I had never in any year asked to attend a conference, and that she would have to be a mind reader to know that I wanted to attend a conference. She had to ditch that lie when I informed her that I had written proof of my requests as well as her acknowledgements. I had also raised the same topic as part of my informal grievance. Faced with her second lie, I suggested she provide the team with a breakdown of how she had allocated her Staff Development budget, because I know that I'd received very little of it during the 12 years that she had managed the team. She said that it would prove embarrassing to those team members who don't ask to attend training or conferences. In reality, it would have been embarrassing how much of that budget went to her friends. She didn't see it as a Staff Development budget, but money she could use to buy popularity from those she favoured.
She introduced a third lie during the grievance hearing by saying that the conference I wished to attend was no longer important to the university because it didn't deal with the software we use. It was an Oracle conference, and I was an Oracle Database Administrator. Just about every system in the university uses Oracle databases, and Mark Toole had announced to everyone in IS Services that the university was committed to using Oracle for future systems, even if there was a non Oracle system available that was considered advantageous.
Still at the grievance hearing, Kathy then reverted to her original lie by claiming that I hadn't asked to attend the Oracle conference. Mark Toole, Karen Stark and Lynn McDonald had witnessed Kathy's behaviour at informal grievance meetings. It was extremely embarrassing. Following those meetings, I suggested to Mark that Kathy would struggle to answer questions at any grievance hearing, because she either avoids the questions or she lies in obvious ways and then ties herself in knots with her lies. I expect it was due to this that Kathy wasn't asked to respond to the allegations in my grievance, and why I wasn't invited to attend her grievance hearing, or given an opportunity to respond to her statement.
In 2008, Kathy turned down my request to attend the Oracle conference and instead sent Karen Eccleson who had already attended since the last time I attended. She also sent Lynn McDonald, a Project Manager. Karen came to me and asked if I had put in a request to attend, because she didn't understand why Kathy would not have selected me ahead of the two she did select. Karen then went to see Kathy and asked her why she hadn't selected me. Karen told me that Kathy more or less told her to keep quiet about it. As I predicted, Lynn returned saying that she gained nothing from the conference. It's a very technical conference, and Lynn is non technical. When I first became the DBA, Kathy said I would attend that conference each year. It's predominately attended by DBAs. I used Oracle every day. To send a Project Manager when I hadn't attended for five years was just pure bullying. It was as if she received some evil pleasure by forcing me, a senior member of staff, to have to ask to attend the conference which covered my area of expertise, and then turn down my requests in favour of my colleagues.
Kathy wasn't slow to spend money on herself either. I'd heard from team members that while attending a conference in Dunblane (just a few miles from her home in Stirling), she stayed overnight in a hotel. She also continues to put herself through Project Management training, even though there are two full time Project Managers in the team.
It was also about ten years since I received any Oracle training.
Recruitment and promotion was another area where Kathy would abuse procedures to help her friends. Everyone in the team is aware of it, and a few have confronted her about it. I witnessed this directly when Kathy and I formed part of an interview panel. Following this, I asked Kathy not to include me in any future interview panels. Although I personally hadn't done anything wrong, I felt a certain guilt by association. On another occasion, she had asked me and other senior members of the team to give our approval for a plan she had to give a friend a job in the team at a senior level.
There was another act of deviousness by Kathy in relation to the matter of conference attendance. In answer to the email she sent the team suggesting that I was stupid to expect her to read my mind in order for her to know I wanted to attend a conference, I replied to her and the team confirming that I still had copies of some of my written requests and her acknowledgements. No doubt this would have been a blow to her, as she would have been hoping that I had deleted all of them and not been able to demonstrate that she is a liar. A couple of days later I received an email from her inviting me to meet with her to discuss "the appropriate procedure for requesting to attend a conference". At first her email had me completely baffled as I couldn't understand what she meant by "appropriate procedure". Then some time later, it suddenly hit me what she was doing. Although her email was addressed to me alone, it was a meeting request, and she had chosen to make it publicly visible on her Outlook Calendar with a title of "Conference Attendance". The team frequently had to refer to her calendar, and an item with that title would have drawn their attention. I wrote to Kathy and asked her to remove the email from her calendar, pointing out that it was publicly visible and that it could easily be construed that she was criticising me for using an inappropriate procedure for requesting to attend conference. She was dishonestly and publicly attempting to justify her earlier dishonest email to the team. I also included an excerpt from the university's Anti Bullying policy which showed that her behaviour was an example of bullying. She reset her email to "private", then a few minutes later she made it "public" again. I went to her office to see her about it. When I opened her door, she was on the telephone so I returned to my office. She had seen me and would have known that I was going to speak to her about her email. A few minutes later she removed her email and replaced it with a private email requesting a meeting with me. Her new email said that the purpose of the meeting was to consider how we could improve the procedure. However, when I attended the meeting with her, she used it to try to justify her bizarre behaviour.
Some time later, in the presence of my union representative, Mark Toole said that it was he who instructed Kathy to withdraw her email and to replace it with an invitation to a meeting with a more positive purpose.
I had written to Kathy and listed all of the occasions when I had generously offered her an opportunity to amend her behaviour towards me. I offered her an opportunity to apologise. She didn't take that opportunity. Instead, she sent an email to Karen Stark and Mark Toole in which she was concerned that it was now obvious that she was guilty of bullying behaviour, and that she could tell from the tone of my email that I had had enough of it and would be taking my grievance to the formal stage.
That commitment falls far short of my own.
Several years ago, I received a very good offer to join another company. Former Director, Tony Osbourne heard about it and offered me a raise of roughly 50% in order to retain my services. Although I loved my job, I turned down his offer because he was unwilling to offer the same raise to my colleague, Jaana who did the same job as me, and whose performance I felt was much better than mine. I couldn't work alongside her knowing that I was earning 50% more than she did while she was worth more than me.
It was only when I was about to hand in my notice that Tony agreed to offer Jaana the same raise.
Since then I witnessed extraordinary inequality, and especially by Kathy McCabe. Unfortunately, my colleagues (including Jaana) could see that I was being deliberately disadvantaged by Kathy, but they were unwilling to speak out about it.
One of the first things that Kathy wrote in her grievance was "I treat the team fairly and consistently". It's an unbelievable claim that would be very funny, if it wasn't so serious. The only thing consistent about Kathy was her unfairness and how she would give special treatment to her friends.
She also made this claim to me during a meeting I had with her after she had turned down my request to attend a conference for the sixth year running. That was the second lie she made on the subject. Her first lie was made publicly to the entire team in an email. She unbelievably claimed that I had never in any year asked to attend a conference, and that she would have to be a mind reader to know that I wanted to attend a conference. She had to ditch that lie when I informed her that I had written proof of my requests as well as her acknowledgements. I had also raised the same topic as part of my informal grievance. Faced with her second lie, I suggested she provide the team with a breakdown of how she had allocated her Staff Development budget, because I know that I'd received very little of it during the 12 years that she had managed the team. She said that it would prove embarrassing to those team members who don't ask to attend training or conferences. In reality, it would have been embarrassing how much of that budget went to her friends. She didn't see it as a Staff Development budget, but money she could use to buy popularity from those she favoured.
She introduced a third lie during the grievance hearing by saying that the conference I wished to attend was no longer important to the university because it didn't deal with the software we use. It was an Oracle conference, and I was an Oracle Database Administrator. Just about every system in the university uses Oracle databases, and Mark Toole had announced to everyone in IS Services that the university was committed to using Oracle for future systems, even if there was a non Oracle system available that was considered advantageous.
Still at the grievance hearing, Kathy then reverted to her original lie by claiming that I hadn't asked to attend the Oracle conference. Mark Toole, Karen Stark and Lynn McDonald had witnessed Kathy's behaviour at informal grievance meetings. It was extremely embarrassing. Following those meetings, I suggested to Mark that Kathy would struggle to answer questions at any grievance hearing, because she either avoids the questions or she lies in obvious ways and then ties herself in knots with her lies. I expect it was due to this that Kathy wasn't asked to respond to the allegations in my grievance, and why I wasn't invited to attend her grievance hearing, or given an opportunity to respond to her statement.
In 2008, Kathy turned down my request to attend the Oracle conference and instead sent Karen Eccleson who had already attended since the last time I attended. She also sent Lynn McDonald, a Project Manager. Karen came to me and asked if I had put in a request to attend, because she didn't understand why Kathy would not have selected me ahead of the two she did select. Karen then went to see Kathy and asked her why she hadn't selected me. Karen told me that Kathy more or less told her to keep quiet about it. As I predicted, Lynn returned saying that she gained nothing from the conference. It's a very technical conference, and Lynn is non technical. When I first became the DBA, Kathy said I would attend that conference each year. It's predominately attended by DBAs. I used Oracle every day. To send a Project Manager when I hadn't attended for five years was just pure bullying. It was as if she received some evil pleasure by forcing me, a senior member of staff, to have to ask to attend the conference which covered my area of expertise, and then turn down my requests in favour of my colleagues.
Kathy wasn't slow to spend money on herself either. I'd heard from team members that while attending a conference in Dunblane (just a few miles from her home in Stirling), she stayed overnight in a hotel. She also continues to put herself through Project Management training, even though there are two full time Project Managers in the team.
It was also about ten years since I received any Oracle training.
Recruitment and promotion was another area where Kathy would abuse procedures to help her friends. Everyone in the team is aware of it, and a few have confronted her about it. I witnessed this directly when Kathy and I formed part of an interview panel. Following this, I asked Kathy not to include me in any future interview panels. Although I personally hadn't done anything wrong, I felt a certain guilt by association. On another occasion, she had asked me and other senior members of the team to give our approval for a plan she had to give a friend a job in the team at a senior level.
There was another act of deviousness by Kathy in relation to the matter of conference attendance. In answer to the email she sent the team suggesting that I was stupid to expect her to read my mind in order for her to know I wanted to attend a conference, I replied to her and the team confirming that I still had copies of some of my written requests and her acknowledgements. No doubt this would have been a blow to her, as she would have been hoping that I had deleted all of them and not been able to demonstrate that she is a liar. A couple of days later I received an email from her inviting me to meet with her to discuss "the appropriate procedure for requesting to attend a conference". At first her email had me completely baffled as I couldn't understand what she meant by "appropriate procedure". Then some time later, it suddenly hit me what she was doing. Although her email was addressed to me alone, it was a meeting request, and she had chosen to make it publicly visible on her Outlook Calendar with a title of "Conference Attendance". The team frequently had to refer to her calendar, and an item with that title would have drawn their attention. I wrote to Kathy and asked her to remove the email from her calendar, pointing out that it was publicly visible and that it could easily be construed that she was criticising me for using an inappropriate procedure for requesting to attend conference. She was dishonestly and publicly attempting to justify her earlier dishonest email to the team. I also included an excerpt from the university's Anti Bullying policy which showed that her behaviour was an example of bullying. She reset her email to "private", then a few minutes later she made it "public" again. I went to her office to see her about it. When I opened her door, she was on the telephone so I returned to my office. She had seen me and would have known that I was going to speak to her about her email. A few minutes later she removed her email and replaced it with a private email requesting a meeting with me. Her new email said that the purpose of the meeting was to consider how we could improve the procedure. However, when I attended the meeting with her, she used it to try to justify her bizarre behaviour.
Some time later, in the presence of my union representative, Mark Toole said that it was he who instructed Kathy to withdraw her email and to replace it with an invitation to a meeting with a more positive purpose.
I had written to Kathy and listed all of the occasions when I had generously offered her an opportunity to amend her behaviour towards me. I offered her an opportunity to apologise. She didn't take that opportunity. Instead, she sent an email to Karen Stark and Mark Toole in which she was concerned that it was now obvious that she was guilty of bullying behaviour, and that she could tell from the tone of my email that I had had enough of it and would be taking my grievance to the formal stage.
Saturday
Jackie O'Neil
Jackie O'Neil, 42 Melloch Crescent, Tillicoultry, FK13 6QJ
Below is the statement that Jackie O'Neil gave during the Disciplinary Investigation carried out by Graham Millar and Gail Miller. Needless to say, it's a pack of lies made up following collusion with others including Eileen MacDonald.
Section 4. Jackie gives a false account of the incident that took place on 10th March in an office with up 14 colleagues present, and my DBA colleague, David Black standing right next to us. I was helping Jackie with her upgrade. Her upgrade failed, and she thought the failure was due to me making a mistake and not carrying out an instruction she had given me by email. However, it was due to the fact that she had failed to follow the software vendor's instruction to ask the DBA to increase the size of the database. Because she thought it was my mistake, she felt justified in screaming "I TOLD YOU!" at me while slamming her hand and pen on her desk. I believe she did this to alert everyone to what she considered to be a rare occurence of me making a mistake. David and I just concentrated on fixing the mistake and getting the upgrade restarted. At my next scheduled meeting with David and Kathy McCabe, I mentioned Jackie's latest outburst. Kathy said that Jackie had told her that she had had to work until 10pm because of the mistake. David and I knew that that was rubbish because she would have only lost an hour due to the error. Kathy notified Mark Toole of my complaint, and Mark offered to meet with me and Jackie to try to resolve the difficulties I had to face working with Jackie. I accepted his offer once he confirmed it would be informal. I didn't want Jackie sacked because of this incident. I just wanted her to stop the shouting and to modify her behaviour.
In the grievance I brought against Kathy, I mentioned previous incidents of Jackie shouting at me, and added that Kathy had just said she wasn't interested. Unknown to me, Jackie was interviewed on 16th March and was asked about those incidents. Incredibly, just six days after screaming at me, she denied ever having shouted at me or anyone else. In her grievance report, Eileen Schofield said that my allegations were met with a mix of incredulity and anger.
Mark Toole changed his mind about the meeting, and met with Jackie by himself to discuss the incident. He refused to tell me what she said, but I genuinely didn't think there was a chance on earth that she would deny screaming at me; not with so many witnesses, and especially not with David standing right next to us. I had underestimated the problem within the team, and just how cowardly Jackie is, despite normally being quick to shout her mouth off.
Jackie said I didn't answer an email she sent me with her instructions. I showed Mark Toole the email below which I sent Jackie in reply. I also asked him to refer to the software vendor's upgrade instructions which showed that Jackie was responsible for the upgrade failure. He chose not to. Later at the appeal hearing, Martin McCrindle said he'd get me a copy of those instructions. He didn't. I wrote him a reminder. He didn't even respond to it.
Three investigators including a Director and two Managers investigated this incident as part of the Disciplinary Investigation. Mark Toole emphasised that it would be a fair and thorough investigation, which is why he said it took more than two months to complete. Yet none of the investigators chose to interview David Black about it, even though Jackie and I both agree that he was right beside us at the time. Nobody else in the team was asked about it either. This wasn't due to any extraordinary mental lapse in those three investigators. It was because it was obvious to all three of them that Jackie and her partners in crime were lying, and any evidence confirming that was to be avoided.
Motivated by having been talked to about her behaviour, Jackie grasped the opportunity to get together with others and make up false complaints about me. I still had a grievance against Eileen MacDonald that Mark Toole was to deal with, and Una Forsyth was upset at having been talked to about assaulting me. Somehow they had managed to persuade Selina Gibb, a close friend of Eileen's, to become involved in their ill conceived plan. None of them had given any thought to the fact that evidence existed that refuted their claims. In any normal organisation, they would have been sacked for making malicious complaints. Stirling University is not a normal organisation.
Section 2. In 2003 at my appraisal meeting, Kathy said she wanted me to become more assertive with the programmers, so that they would gain more from my greater knowledge and experience. I am naturally very quiet and I hate confrontation. I was always keen to help my colleagues, but because of that I had somehow become a doormat. Jackie is a very loud, aggressive and arrogant character who had shouted at me many times despite always being in the wrong. There were many times that I tried to explain certain things to her, but rather than focus on what I was saying, she would go off on a tangent to irrelevant matters, and I'd have to keep bringing her back to the main issue. Sometimes she would argue aggresively when I was telling her matters of irrefutable fact. It's for that reason that Jackie has now been in her role for over 12 years and accomplshes very little without a great deal of help from her colleagues.
Despite her limited ability, Jackie's salary was upgraded after the role evaluation (Framework) process to Grade 8 (£43,000 per year). It was an advantage to be in a role occupied by several employees. In order to claim a requirement for the role, it was only necessary to show that one of the role holders had carried out any particular task. Obviously if the role is occupied by one person, they could only include work in their role description that they had carried out themselves. The Programmers produced a description which was an aggregate of their individual responsibilities. Jackie benefitted because she shared the job title.
Jackie is a blagger, and makes a lot of noise about very small achievements. Shortly before I was suspended, she had sent the whole team an email telling us that she had completed a piece of work. I personally didn't know anything about it. Paul became very frustrated by the email because the work she was referring to was a very minor piece of work which would have taken her about two minutes, yet the Programmers had asked her to carry it out more than a year previously, and Paul felt frustrated that she was making a big fuss about it. He was already in a bad mood with her because he had been reading through job applications in order to produce a short list, and Jackie was making a lot of noise as she frequently did. He did something I'd never seen anybody do before, he turned to her and asked her to keep the noise down. I feared she would blow up, but she appeared to comply quietly. Then five minutes later, she left the room, slamming the door behind her. Shortly afterwards, a few of us considered what would be an appropriate job title for each of the "Programmers" based on what they did as individuals. As a job title for Jackie, Stephen suggested "System Assistant", which is a Grade 6 role. I don't remember exactly what Paul said, but it included the word "bastard" and it inferred that Jackie was worth less than zero. He followed this by insisting he wasn't joking. Even Paul wasn't aware of the depth of the problem. I had worked very closely with Jackie for 12 years, and she would test the patience of a saint.
Around the same time, Jaana became very frustrated with Jackie over this upgrade too. It was a special "unicode" upgrade which required the system to be able to handle student names that contain characters from different character sets. Jackie had attended conferences, workshops and user group meetings about the topic, but when she came to implement it, it became clear that she didn't have sufficient understanding of what was required. Kathy had to bring in Jaana, who hadn't attended any of the conferences, to get things sorted out.
Jackie demonstrated her lack of understanding during one meeting when she said that the upgrade would have to allow French characters with acute and grave accents to be entered. I explained that these characters belonged to the existing character set, and examples already existed in the system. Two days later at another meeting, she repeated the same thing. Then a few days later, she set up some test data including students with foreign names for the team to work on. These were all names that were covered by the existing character set. When I pointed this out to her, she admitted that she didn't see the point of the upgrade.
Jackie, as usual had waited too long to start investigating the requirements, and there was a slight panic within the team because they were having to be drawn from their other work at short notice. Stephen criticised me and David for not being more proactive with regard to the upgrade. I sent him a copy of an email I had sent Jackie suggesting that she make an early start on it, because it was common for Jackie to leave things to the last minute, and end up having others do her work for her. Although Stephen found it easy to criticise me (albeit unjustly), he lacked the courage to criticise Jackie face to face.
There were further mistakes that Jackie made during this upgrade, even though she had already had the benefit of a rehearsal for it. There were additional steps required to allow programs that had been written in-house to work correctly following the upgrade, but Jackie hadn't noted these additional requirements to ensure they were implemented. For example, it had been identified that an amendment had to be made to a program I'd written, and which had to be run immediately after the upgrade. Jackie didn't notify me of this, so when she ran it, it failed. Again she became agitated, and started raising her voice at me. I calmed her down, worked out what the problem was, and fixed it quickly. I then sent her an email with very simple instructions for her to run two programs. A short time later she started acting up again, because she thought the program hadn't worked properly. She started raising her voice yet again, and was raving about how busy she was and that this was holding her up. I had to ask her three times if she had followed my instructions correctly and run the two programs. Eventually she admitted that she had only run the second of the two programs. For the grade that Jackie works at, she should be able to write the programs that she was running, but there is no way in the world she would be able to do that. At the very least, she should be able to follow simple instructions. However, even that proved to be too much to expect. A week later, Una asked me to investigate a problem with a system. I worked out that it was due to Jackie not notifying the programmers of the amendments that had been identified as being required during the rehearsal.
The plan was for Jackie to apply this upgrade a third time; in the live system. I wrote to her and suggested how she might best ensure that nothing was missed. Jackie said that she didn't have time.
I often had to help Jackie with her work, and clear up the mess she'd made. It became the norm for her to just delegate parts of her work to me. I think it was counter productive for me to have done it for her, because she never progressed. Kathy too should have kept a close watch on her work to ensure that she made sufficient progress. Instead, Jackie continued wasting time by getting involved in anything that would take her focus away from her real work. She also got involved in such things as green issues, first aid training, union executive duties, organising Christmas lunch and Secret Santa, and anything else that she could find to do instead of work. Jackie was trapped in a vicious circle of having to try to appear as though she was good at her job. That takes a lot of time and effort when you achieve as little as Jackie. She frequently complained of lacking time to get her work done, and it was becoming clear that she had been going to Kathy and complaining that I was the cause of her shortage of time, knowing that Kathy would be just too eager to hear of such things about me.
During the informal grievance meetings with Mark Toole, Kathy had attacked me over a piece of work I'd carried out. I had worked till 11pm at home on a Friday night to complete this work on a project. Any normal manager would have been delighted with my dedication. Kathy criticised me for not doing it the following day as had been originally suggested, and for doing it at home instead of the office. She said that I had greatly inconvenienced my colleagues, and she named Jackie in particular. This was an absurd criticism. We had met about two weeks before I carried out that work, and everyone was in favour of it being done earlier as it gave the team more options for them to carry out work that was to follow. Also I had done similar work many times before at home in the evening, and Kathy never said anything about it. Kathy said that Jackie had wanted to be with me while I carried out this work. The work I was doing was to upgrade and migrate a database. This meant that nobody else could do any work while I was doing it. I later discovered that Kathy had planned to buy pizza for me, Jackie, Stephen and Phil to eat while I carried out that work in the office. Kathy was desperate to criticise me for anything, no matter how stupid it made her appear. My union rep told Mark that that was just one example of bullying. Mark was careful not to admit to any bullying.
Kathy frequently allowed certain team members to work from home during the day. Often we'd only find out about it on the actual day, and sometimes meetings would have to be rearranged because of it. Yet here she was criticising me in the presence of senior management for having spent my Friday evening working on a task that required only me, and I'd given the team a week's advance notice of it. The reason I did it outside normal hours was to allow staff to use the systems uninterrupted during the day, which wouldn't have been possible while I was upgrading the database. It takes an extremely twisted and wicked mind to turn that into a reason to criticise an employee. And this came just a few weeks after Mark had told Kathy that criticism had to be delivered privately and be evidence based.
There were other reasons for Jackie being short of time. One of them gave rise to the game played by the other team members, "Guess what time Jackie will return from lunch". Somebody would take a note of the time she left for lunch, and then ask us all to guess when she would return. The closest guesser would be the winner. It was not uncommon for Jackie to have a three hour lunch hour. When she returned, we'd announce the winning guess and congratulate the winner, and Jackie never knew what we were talking about.
Sometimes she'd enjoy a mid afternoon sleep at her desk. One time, Eric photographed her asleep and emailed the team with it. Some of us added captions for a laugh.
I had been getting used to the noise that Jackie made every day in the office we all shared. I sat furthest away from her, and when she started up, I would sink down in my chair to avoid distraction. Others, like Paul, Stephen, and especially David frequently grumbled about the noise. It was only a problem for me when I was having to concentrate on a serious, urgent problem; especially if my concentration was repeatedly broken by Jackie shouting "Have you fixed it yet?"
Before Jackie joined the team, our office had been fairly quiet but friendly. Then it was like a tornado had hit us. If Jackie wasn't screaming at me, she'd be screaming down the phone at people in other teams, or making long private phone calls at the top of her voice. Then when she'd finish her private call, I'd have to hear it all again as she'd turn to colleagues and repeat the telephone conversation to them. At the time, I was new to my job, and had to concentrate a lot. I spoke to Kathy about it, but she more or less told me to get used to it. A few years later, I was moved to another room to make way for new programmers. Next day, everybody in that room complained to Kathy about the amount and volume of noise Jackie made. Kathy held a meeting with everyone (except Jackie). The outcome was that they'd all have to get used to the noise.
In 2009, all university office staff were required to complete online training about the office environment. The training said that if you feel your work environment is noisy, you must see your manager about it because it's a source of stress. Kathy enjoyed a nice, quiet office to herself. Perhaps she should invite Jackie to share her office, and just "get used to it".
The screaming incident with Jackie was similar to another Jackie incident a few years previously. Although her technical knowledge was extremely poor, Jackie, for some inexplicable reason, imagined that it was superior to mine, and she would demonstrate that extraordinary belief with incredible arrogance. The best way I can think of to describe this arrogance is to compare her with those X Factor applicants who quite obviously cannot sing, but who argue agressively with Simon Cowell and the other judges that they can, and that the judges are wrong. However, these tone deaf singers can genuinely believe that they sound good if that belief has been due to them singing along to music alone in their bedrooms. What they are hearing may sound good to them, and nobody has told them any different. Where this analogy falls down is that Jackie frequently had to come to me and others for help even with very simple matters. That should have been a major indication to herself that she was technically weak.
The previous incident happened when she was trying to run a program on a database, and the database reported an error. It was an error I was very familiar with, having first seen it when I was a student. Jackie had been a programmer for about 7 years at the time. While virtually all programmers would have known the cause of the error, any that didn't would normally take a minute to look up the error in one of several ways available to find out what it meant. Not Jackie, however. She burst out of her room and barged into mine, the way that only she can. She loudly announces the problem and demands that I fix it quickly because it's holding her up and her work is very important, etc, etc. Jackie loves making a scene. It's her favourite thing. I calmly explained to her that the error wasn't due to a problem with the database, but with the program she was running. I explained three ways in which the problem could be resolved. Jackie was having none of it. She was convinced that the problem was with the database, and that I was just fobbing her off. And besides, she had probably waited for years for the moment when she could tell everyone that I was no good at my job. She stormed out my room and back into her own. She phoned the software vendor who had provided her with the program to run. She angrily described me as "our useless DBA". They told her exactly what I had told her in order to fix the problem.
Of course, Jackie denied this when she was interviewed, but a witness confirmed this in an email I presented to Mark Toole. As with anything else that was true, Mark simply ignored it.
When I told my manager, Kathy McCabe about that incident she said she wasn't interested because she expects her employees to sort these things our between themselves. She proudly repeated this at a meeting with Mark Toole. Yet she was obsessively interested in any gossip about me. If I was to draw Kathy's attention to the massive inconsistency, she would just say that she didn't want to discuss it. When I submitted my formal grievance, I had hoped that I would finally hear Kathy explain why she behaved that way, but due to the cover up, I was denied any explanation. Perhaps I'll finally get my long awaited answer when she is cross examined at the tribunal. "I don't want to discuss it" might not be considered a satisfactory explanation.
I'd be very happy for Jackie and me to take polygraph tests to show who is lying. We can do it on TV if she likes!
As at 22 June 2011, this is the fourth most frequently visited post on my blog.
To be continued...
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