Yelling at the tide
We figured someone had to at least try.
So in the light of this, we’ve sent a letter.
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TO: Judge Susan Walker, President, Employment Tribunal (Scotland)
Dear Madam President,
I read with considerable dismay and alarm your response to a recent complaint from a Mr Ewan Kennedy regarding the conduct of Employment Judge Alexander Kemp in the case of Peggie vs Fife Health Board and Dr. B Upton.
Like Mr Kennedy, my concern is not with the judgment itself, which I am aware is subject to appeal, but with the specific content of the judgment, and in particular the much-publicised presence of a number of entirely fictional quotations from previous cases, which Judge Kemp used to form key aspects of his decision.
The explanation issued by your office in response to Mr Kennedy’s complaint is deeply troubling. It states:
“I am satisfied that Judge Kemp did not use generative AI in drafting the judgment. It is clear from my enquiries that the source of the erroneous quotes from Forstater and Ashers was an exchange of correspondence between Judge Kemp and a judicial colleague.”
His Majesty’s Courts And Tribunal Service can surely not consider “a big boy did it and ran away” to be an adequate response to such a grave matter. While not a legal expert, as far as I am aware it is unprecedented – I am unable to find a single example in recorded history of a judgment containing multiple entirely fabricated citations – and questions therefore arise which urgently require clarification.
(1) Why was Judge Kemp consulting a colleague (who had, presumably, not heard the evidence in the case) at all? What expertise could they bring to bear that he, having read and heard all of the evidence, could not?
(2) Who was this colleague? If the judgment has been significantly affected by someone other than the person whose name it is issued in, how can accountability and transparency and public trust in the judicial system be served by that person remaining anonymous? How are people to discern whether that person may have a conflict of interest, particularly given the ongoing political issues and sensitivities around this case and this topic more generally?
(3) How much of the judgment was the unnamed colleague, not Judge Kemp, actually responsible for or exercising influence over? If they fed him false quotations, what else did they tell him?
(4) Most importantly, how did this anonymous colleague come to produce these fabricated citations? Because clearly it is no more explicable or acceptable for he or she to have invented them than for Judge Kemp to have done so. If you are satisfied that Judge Kemp did not derive them from generative AI, are you equally satisfied that the anonymous colleague did not? If they did not, where did they come from?
It surely cannot be satisfactory for the public to be dismissively told that these highly significant and consequential quotations simply materialised from thin air.
Either (i) they come from cases other than those they were attributed to (which seems unlikely, as the quotes themselves were replaced in the subsequent versions of the judgment, rather than the citations being corrected), or (ii) they were produced by AI, or (iii) they came from an unknown third party and were not checked by Judge Kemp, or (iv) either Judge Kemp or the anonymous colleague invented them themselves.
Since any of the latter three explanations, and in particular (iv), would be extremely serious, it cannot be just left hanging as a possibility, for it would reasonably cast the integrity of Judge Kemp at a minimum into doubt, and even the entire judicial system, should it be seen or believed to be the case that the matter was being whitewashed.
It is also not clear from the response on which grounds the complaint was rejected. Section 6.1 of the complaints policy lays out the following possibilities:
Grounds (a) to (e) and grounds (g) to (l) seem obviously not to apply, leaving only ground (f), which would be consistent with this passage from the response:
“I do not consider that it supports a proposition that making a mistake in a judicial decision, whether an error of law or an error of the kind that has been identified in this judgment, can be – without more – deemed judicial misconduct”.
But the Guide to Judicial Conduct says as follows:
There are three basic principles guiding judicial conduct:
• Judicial independence
• Impartiality
• Integrity
To have used entirely fictitious citations, provided by an unnamed party and not checked by the tribunal judge, in coming to a judgment which was likely to prove controversial no matter what the decision, and in the knowledge that that decision was likely to be subject to intense scrutiny, must surely place any judge’s integrity and impartiality in question, absent a satisfactory explanation of how those fictitious citations came about. “It was a regrettable error” is at once a statement of the obvious, and manifestly inadequate.
As such, then, I respectfully request that your office either:
– provides greater clarity on who Judge Kemp corresponded with, what was said in this correspondence, and what the ultimate source of the fabricated quotations was,
or
– reconsiders its decision as to whether the fabrications amount to judicial misconduct.
I look forward to your response in the fervent hope that it will go some way to restoring public confidence over these events.
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As ever, we’ll let you know if we hear anything.
Well argued – good luck
I think the ‘if’ in your last sentence should have been all caps!
Superbly crafted, their response is eagerly awaited
At a boy Rev!
They will need to scrape the bottom of their bullshit barrel to produce something dressed up as a response.
For others reading this, without this site these people get away with tramping all over the truth.
Lets see who they did come?
What was I written here, Lets see what they come back with as a reply.
Who hasn’t noticed that the Scottish judicial system, under the watch of the SNP, has, in many respects, become a-law-unto-itself?
Sin 1707 “the Scottish judicial system” haes serred anely an Englis Croun.
Sure about that, Alf?
My innate knowledge of Scots, backed up by a check in the Scots dictionary, shows “sin” is no Scots equivalent of “since”.
You do your cause no good, and treat readers with contempt, when you make up your cod Scots as you go along.
Methinks Alex Salmond came to that conclusion many years ago having been the target of Scotgov & the untrustworthy SNP. He was spot on in that conclusion.I’ve spent most of my life living under the rule of English Law & know it pretty well but for the last 10 years living in Scotland I just can’t believe what the Scottish legal system & judiciary gets away with. My efforts to understand the reasoning behind decisions leaves wondering why the honest practitioners in the legal & courts system allow the corrupt to operate or is that down to Westminster trying to force Scotland to be subject to the laws of England & Wales. This decision re Judge Kemp is definitely a matter being denied & an attempt to sweep it under the carpet. It needs to be stopped.
Thanks for all you do Stuart
Strangely enough, for a nationalist, and a Scottish nationalist at that (though not SNP) I do not believe that this particular affair had anything to do with English law being forced on us – unless, as the Rev has hinted, someone with an axe to grind, and from south of the border, was involved. Scots law seems perfectly capable of the most egregious decisions all on its own. Neither do I believe that Westminster had ‘trans’ foisted on us for the very simple reason that England is as benighted as we are in this respect.
The problems lie squarely with our own legal system and the judge who allowed such an appallingly biased, false and tampered-with judgement to follow the tribunal, where he had also made remarks that could only be interpreted as biased. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
The Rev has instituted an excellent appraisal of the meat of the judgement and found it wanting – or, at least, he wants answers to very glaring and obvious omissions, admissions and the substituting of words and phrases to achieve the opposite meaning to that which was intended in the original case’s judgement. I would add that every omission, admission and change falls directly into the ‘trans’ lobby’s orbit, skewing the evidence that was given at the tribunal and creating bias in favour of the ‘trans’ argument.
Where I, personally, might find there to have been, potentially, some interference from government, would not be Westminster, but Holyrood because of the non repeal of the failed GRRB. I am sure, many in the parties – all of them – want to have it resurrected in the future. Also, because of the forthcoming court case brought by FWS against the SG on the subject of ‘trans’ identified men in the female prison estate. Any loss now could reflect adversely on this case.
Please, folks, tear your eyes away from Westminster and Whitehall (although still being mindful of their tenacity for intrigue) and start to accept that we are, in Scotland, perfectly capable of soiling our own nest. Westminster, of course, will rejoice if the prisoners’ case goes against the SG, as it will let them off the hook, and they can point to it as a precedent for banning male ‘trans’ prisoners from the female prison estate in England, too. Let Scotland take the flak from the ‘trans’ mob. The problem for the SG is that no legislation anywhere gives men the right to enter female spaces. Even where a GRC is involved, it must be ‘proportionate’. Putting violent men in with women who are, largely, on the lower offending scale, is hardly ‘proportionate’.
From the very beginning of his hearing this case, Judge Kemp knew that one of the parties would probably appeal the decision. On this basis, why didn’t he dot all the “i’s” and cross all the “t’s” to make sure that his decision was absolutely watertight with no scope for the sort of situation he has dropped himself into?
If he didn’t – why didn’t he?
If he did – what an incompetent job he did!
Oh dear, in the real (i.e. non-government) world, he would be disciplined and sacked – I hope.
Brilliant letter. Depending on the response you almost wonder if it would be worth a concerted and focused letter writing campaign to the Justice Secretary and others. I’m certainly happy to take 15 minutes to write something.
Welcome to “The Colony of Scotland”.
I fancy that the expectations of the colonised Scots on here – and throughout the wider ‘natioun of Scotland’ – are based on the strange notion that they live in a modern, free and open, self-determining democratic country of their own.
It gets boring after a time seeing the same indignation expressed over and over with the ridiculous expectation that things in Scotland will improve while still part of the ‘Union’.
If folk really want to know what to expect from the Scottish justice system – or any other ‘Scottish’ institution – they should buy a copy of Alf Baird’s book “Doun-Hauden”.
Hot Tip: Don’t expect too much, or anything at all, really. Remember, if yer a Scot yer a coloniZed… and the colonised are the shit on the shoes of empires.
Wow, Northy, Off Topic by comment # 11.
Surely a new Wings BTL record.
As for self-identifying as shit, that’s gotta be a first too. So congrats are in order. You may already have submitted the stand-out comment for this thread.
I gave up holding my breath for such results a long time ago. The Establishment will, undoubtedly, close ranks again rather than throw one of their compliant members under a very small minibus.
Back to my Sudoku.
Given that Shona is to be replaced by Susan, it would be interesting if some forensic journalist were to dig into the social media histories of both.
Search for complaints about “glass ceilings”, “misogynistic patriarchy”, “white privilege”, that kind of thing. Establish if they accepted or are about to accept their positions believing they merited them, or if they know themselves the correct woke and diversity boxes were ticked.
That’s the big problem with appointees like them in the current climate. We can never look at them without a niggling doubt about their real suitability for the post. In other words, are they just the latest failures catapulted far above their competence because of diversity targets?
It’s only fair. The slightest whiff of a past record of “right wing” beliefs, or “a woman is an adult biological female” would have the usual woke nasties scweaming for the appointee’s instant dismissal.
The key to eliminating the woke from Scottish public life is to learn to turn their weapons against them. And then use them without mercy.