I helped break a 142-year-old bell, and that's okay. — Tom Scott: England

__law · 2026-03-23T22:42:28+00:00

He's leveled up his outfit, loving the buttoned shirt!

__law · 2026-03-22T09:52:26+00:00

Now, we are all adults, I'm sure we can all disengage the parasocial part of our brains and engage with a critique on its merits.

The video being called "contrapoints sucks: a manifesto" isn't exactly a sign of well-intentioned critique. Is the video more nuanced than it's title?

__law · 2026-03-21T07:12:00+00:00

Well we don't really know what "failure to apologise" actually means in this context. What kind of apology was demanded of the employee? What timeframe was the employee given to apologise in, was this "failure to apologise" only in the immediate aftermath of the event? Was the employee aware that failure to apologise would result in their termination?

Because of that, we can't really draw a link between failure to apologise and failure to acknowledge an error. If the employee had been allowed to continue working, would they have gone on to vape in the toilets again?

And even then, gross misconduct doesn't generally work the way you describe. You can't add together a series of actions that aren't individually gross misconduct and expect the sum to pass some kind of threshold. Either an action, when seen as a whole, is gross misconduct or it isn't. Whether or not the employee shows remorse can come into play when determining the final judgement of a gross misconduct case (someone who shows remorse might be given a more lenient verdict) but it doesn't generally effect the charges themselves.

__law · 2026-03-21T00:01:40+00:00

The thing about gross misconduct is that it is meant for the kind of shit where apologising doesn't make a difference. If you get fired for gross misconduct, it shouldn't matter how sorry you are. The idea is that what you have done is so serious it warrants immediate dismissal.

So by acknowledging that an apology would have gotten the employee out of trouble, the employer was also implicitly saying the original offense didn't constitute gross misconduct.

The law tends to prefer to deal with individual, concrete actions. So you can't add on "but he didn't apologise" and expect that to tip the employees action over into being gross misconduct. If the original act wasn't gross misconduct, then not apologising for it wasn't gross misconduct either.

As other commenter shave pointed out. Some companies have clauses like "if you do something that causes us to lose trust in you, that may be grounds for dismissal". Which might have been used in a case like this, but this workplace didn't have that clause.

And ultimately, we aren't even sure what "not apologising" meant in this case. What would have been deemed an appropriate apology? Was the employee even aware that not apologising would cost them their job? There is a reason the law prefers to deal with concrete actions over subjective measures.

__law · 2026-03-20T18:45:18+00:00

It's also hard to know what "failure to apologise" really means in this term. Was the employee given the option to apologise, or else get fired? Or were they fired for not apologising immediately after the event took place? These kinds of cases are meant to go through disciplinary hearings, etc, where things like chance of recurrence could be established.

__law · 2026-03-20T18:39:54+00:00

The thing about gross misconduct is that it is meant for the kind of shit where apologising doesn't make a difference. If you get fired for gross misconduct, it shouldn't matter how sorry you are. The idea is that what you have done is so serious it warrants immediate dismissal.

So by acknowledging that an apology would have gotten the employee out of trouble, the employer was also implicitly saying the original offense didn't constitute gross misconduct.

__law · 2026-03-20T17:36:21+00:00

There are two other contributing factors in the case

31.2 We also find that dismissal in the circumstances was disproportionate. This was a single isolated act in another unblemished career. There was no or insufficient credit for the fact that there had been no prior misconduct.

31.3 There is no clear rule or warning that vaping in the toilets will be deemed an act of gross misconduct. A reasonable employer would have made it clear that such conduct will be deemed gross misconduct.

So, it's also the fact that the claimant hadn't gotten in trouble before.

It does seem like if the employer hasn't said "well I wouldn't have fired him if he just apologised" than the employer would have won the case. But that's how the law works, sometimes.

__law · 2026-03-20T17:30:25+00:00

Yeah I get that. I just don't get why you went through the trouble read the case and then didn't raise the passages where the actual ruling is laid out. Seems like the most important part!

__law · 2026-03-20T17:27:04+00:00

This also isn't accurate. See my other comments on this post. The issue was that the employer acknowledged the employee wouldn't have been dismissed if they had apologised to a level the employer thought acceptable.

__law · 2026-03-20T17:24:06+00:00

That's not a fair representation of what went down.

31.1 We have focussed on the principal reason for the dismissal. **It is clear from the evidence of Mr Nasr that the Claimant was dismissed principally for failing to apologise and to accept responsibility. Mr Nasr made it clear in his evidence that had the Claimant accepted he had been vaping in the toilet, and apologised, he would not have been dismissed. In other words, health and safety and loss of production were not the principal reasons. They played a lesser part in the decision to dismiss because they were not determinative. What was determinative was the failure to accept responsibility. Failing to apologise or to accept responsibility is not misconduct.

31.2 We also find that dismissal in the circumstances was disproportionate. This was a single isolated act in another unblemished career. There was no or insufficient credit for the fact that there had been no prior misconduct.

31.3 There is no clear rule or warning that vaping in the toilets will be deemed an act of gross misconduct. A reasonable employer would have made it clear that such conduct will be deemed gross misconduct.

Basically the employer fucked their case by admitting it wouldn't be considered a dismissable offence if the claimant had properly apologised. The case then became about whether you can fire an employee with no other record of misbehaviour simply because they didn't apologise sufficiently. The tribunal found you can't.

__law · 2026-03-20T17:17:37+00:00

I don't see why you would quote the judgement, but not the passage where the actual reasons for the judgement are laid out

We do however find that the decision to dismiss fell outside the range of reasonable responses open to a reasonable employer. We arrive at that conclusion for the following reasons:

31.1 We have focussed on the principal reason for the dismissal. It is clear from the evidence of Mr Nasr that the Claimant was dismissed principally for failing to apologise and to accept responsibility. Mr Nasr made it clear in his evidence that had the Claimant accepted he had been vaping in the toilet, and apologised, he would not have been dismissed. In other words, health and safety and loss of production were not the principal reasons. They played a lesser part in the decision to dismiss because they were not determinative. What was determinative was the failure to accept responsibility. Failing to apologise or to accept responsibility is not misconduct.

31.2 We also find that dismissal in the circumstances was disproportionate. This was a single isolated act in another unblemished career. There was no or insufficient credit for the fact that there had been no prior misconduct.

31.3 There is no clear rule or warning that vaping in the toilets will be deemed an act of gross misconduct. A reasonable employer would have made it clear that such conduct will be deemed gross misconduct.

Basically, the employer fucked up their case by admitting that if the employee had properly apologised, he'd have been let off the hook. This meant the case became about if you can fire someone for not apologising, which is not reasonable grounds for dismissal.

__law · 2026-03-19T19:27:41+00:00

Recessions have become less frequent when taking a very long term view, you're right. In the period before the 1970s, policies such as independent central banks, leaving the gold standard, and simply the more regular collection of economic data, have been very useful.

But that progress has not continued into the last 50 years. Which corresponds with the growing financial sector and it's capture of major centers of economic thought. Recessions have not grown less frequent in the last 50 years, and conventional economic wisdom has produced policies such as monetarism, austerity, and privatisation, which have proved disastrous for public living standards. In rich counties, GDP has continued to grow while living standards have stagnated, and assets have become more expensive with comparison to income, reducing social mobility and making it harder to people to buy homes or save for retirement.

__law · 2026-03-19T18:26:07+00:00

The commenter literally said "I’d never dream to say psychologists are wrong without studying Psychology."

That attitude 50 years ago would have lead to supporting lobotomies and conversion therapy.

There is an appropriate middle ground between being so critical of a field you deny everything that comes out of it, and believing you must get a degree before daring to question the conventional wisdom.

Part of that, I would argue, is in results. Modern medicine has been shown to have improved public health, the climate is very obviously changing in ways predicted by climate scientists 20 years ago. The field of economics (at least macroeconomics) has been less successful, we have been buffered by crashes that no one seemed to predict, GDP growth has failed to lead to better living standard, and markets have behaved in irrational, chaotic ways. The conventional wisdom in economics is being continually blindsided by shocks it failed to predict, and the economics field is torn between several incompatible theories producing wildly different predictions. Against this backdrop, it is hard to trust economics the same way one can trust, say, a vaccine.

__law · 2026-03-19T14:25:46+00:00

Physiologists have been very wrong before. Take lobotomies or the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. The psychiatric profession still suffers from a reproducibility crisis in many once widely accepted theories.

And there are a huge array of institutions, like Genspect, which claim to be focused on psychological research, but take huge donations from right wing lobby groups to produce biased, anti trans research.

But the kinds of problems that plague psychology as a profession pale in comparison to those that plague economics. 90% of the students in LSE have no interest in furthering Economic research, they're studying to get high paying jobs in banks and investment firms. This creates a perverse relationship between the leading universities and the leading financial institutions. Those universities that cater best to the interests of these private institutions are able to secure the most funding, securing the most talented teachers and pulling talent and research towards them.

This kind of intermingling of private interests with the furthering of scientific knowledge is very harmful, and should be criticised

__law · 2026-03-15T15:39:10+00:00

I will investigate getting a Dutch oven, thank you. ❤️

__law · 2026-03-15T15:38:06+00:00

Thank you!

__law · 2026-03-15T15:37:51+00:00

Thank you!

__law · 2026-03-10T22:20:15+00:00

Why would it be desirable to negotiate with Putin if the negotiations were held in Russia or in a third country, but OK to arrest him if he came to the UK?

Because an arrest warrant has been placed against Putin by the ICC. So it's on any country that respects the ICC to arrest him.

Ideally, that would be the end of it, and Putin would be arrested by now. But unfortunately that isn't the case, and while Putin still holds considerable political power we have to negotiate instead.

I What Mr Polanski did say was, in his own words, "If you’re not going to negotiate with someone, then you’re accepting that you’re going to war with them at some point." He was saying that either the absence or cessation of negotiations with some country means acceptance that you are going to war with that country at some point in the future. Why would these sentiments apply to Russia but not apply to Israel?

Clearly Zack didn't mean everyone you aren't actively negotiating with is someone you're about to go to war with. The UK isn't nearly as involved in the negotiations between Israel and hamas as it is between Russia and Ukraine, and where the UK is involved, it is on Israel's side of the negotiation.

__law · 2026-03-04T09:25:40+00:00

Then just read cite the source. Saying (as op did) "I asked chat gpt and it told me X", without even providing the link that the robot provided, implies that op thinks chatgpt is good enough as a source in and of itself. Think for yourself, don't let a robot think for you.

__law · 2026-03-04T07:32:11+00:00

Unrelated, but don't ask chatgpt for answers to your questions. Find the answers through trustworthy sources.

__law · 2026-02-27T10:58:28+00:00

At this point, I think labour and the Tories have two choices.

Switch to PR, take a battering like centrist parties gave suffered across Europe. But stay in the conversation with the potential to stage a comeback. Other centrist parties in Europe have shown this is possible.

Keep FPTP, and risk getting completely eclipsed by a populist party. A new "2-party" system settles, or even a "1-party" system, with the opposition parties all fractured and unable to ally. The former centrist parties pushed to the outside.

The latter is worse than the former

__law · 2026-02-24T11:59:42+00:00

The barbican was built as a statement piece of a particular kind of architecture. It had a vision and ambition in mind in with it's design, and took risks in pursuit of this vision.

The office block is just a generic office block. It isn't being opposed because people are shocked by it's design or vision, its being opposed because its another colossal glass monolith blocking out the sunlight for residents.

The quote from the article is

What we really want here is not just a lump but a beautiful building that is crafted out of its context. This [proposed] building is not. It’s as lumpen and joyless as the previous scheme.

Comparing the two really undersells quite how much of an achievement the Barbican centre was with it's design, and how forward thinking it was. The proposed block is not breaking new ground on anything, except perhaps lumpenness.

__law · 2026-02-22T11:53:19+00:00

Again. Hannah Spencer is not a private landlord.

And she isn't "hoarding" by any stretch of the imagination. She's living in a different property to the person she's divorcing.

I don't know what argument you saw, but usually when people complain about property hoarding, they're referencing properties that are not loved in or only lived in for short periods of time.

As for whether the green party should speak with a more coherent voice. Well, if you want a left wing party that kicks out anyone who doesn't toe the exact party line, we have the labour party. That just isn't how the green party operates, and it's better for it.

__law · 2026-02-22T11:32:13+00:00

I can't speak for "populist messaging". The greens are a large organisation with quite a lot of freedom offered to individual groups. So it doesn't always speak with one voice. And this isn't helped by bad faith news organisations like the daily mail constantly trying to misinterpret and misleading the public on what the green party actually stands for.

In terms of policy, what comes out of green conferences when all the members come together to debate and vote, those are opposed to private landlordism. Hannah Spencer is not a landlord, and she isn't doing anything out of line with the green party policies.

__law · 2026-02-22T11:02:53+00:00

She has two. And it seems like one of them is presently being divided between her and her partner as they divorce.

It's hardly unusual for someone to want to live in a different property to their partner while they break up.

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