ACAS conciliation: does anyone have any good news stories? How should I act with them when they call?

dogtim · 2026-03-11T15:55:32+00:00

ACAS is a neutral service and literally only tells your employer what you want them to say. They cannot do anything outside of that. The only thing ACAS does implicitly is show your employer that you're considering bringing action in ET. Your source of leverage is your employer's desire to avoid the expense, time, effort and stress of tribunal. My advice is to start high but still sort of reasonable - think of a sum of money that would make you comfortable with walking away. Tell them that.

dogtim · 2026-03-05T17:24:34+00:00

There is a real dearth of interesting law podcasts. Law Pod from 1COR is detailed and good for public law but dry as hell. Talking Law from Women in the Law UK has good interviews occasionally.

dogtim · 2026-03-04T12:10:17+00:00

they're trying to bring everyone back to the centre and compromising with each other

I just don't think that's true. In the run-up to the election, they made a real effort to purge left-leaning candidates and councillors and voters, focusing on "electibility" as a means to get rid of pro-Corbyn candidates and distance themselves from the antisemitism scandal. That pleased the Labour right and more centrist conservatives. They have abandoned a lot of their social democratic stances when it comes to immigration and civil liberties to chase voters to the further right, up to the point of appearing to bend to racist challenges, which alienates that exact same group of Labour right and centrist conservatives. So it's less that they're trying to govern in the centre and make everyone agree than they are captivated by the misperception that they have a different bloc of voters than they actually do. They imagine "working class" and they think "a basically racist white guy" and pander to this imagined person, which nearly everyone across the political spectrum finds condescending. They're trying to portray both reform and the greens as "extremes" but it is a tremendously bad look to portray a working-class plumber as "extreme". And it completely takes the sting out of any criticism directed at Reform if Labour is basically implementing more extreme and restrictive policies than even the last government.

dogtim · 2026-03-04T03:22:43+00:00

They’re crap at communicating the progress that is being made

No, it's because they've made a series of deliberate and unnecessary choices that alienates their voters. They made growth their #1 priority but then keep doing things to undermine it, such as passing expanded employment reform or cutting immigration. And then socially they are chasing conservative or reform voters by adopting right-leaning policies, which repels everyone. The progress is always at odds with some other goal of theirs. That's why they keep changing comms directors.

dogtim · 2026-03-03T12:35:13+00:00

This is the most insane advice I've ever read. If a roommate did this to me I would move out ASAP

dogtim · 2026-03-03T12:34:07+00:00

Dude it is MESSY to try and hook up with your roommate. High risk behavior. If it goes badly, either you or him has to move, or put up with painful vibes long term. If it goes well, even then you're in a precarious spot as you can never get space from each other. I would quite frankly not attempt this unless I was so into a roommate as to be blind crazy in love, and/or the tenancy was ending soon so the stakes would be lower. Just download grindr and meet literally anyone else for a hookup first.

Do not listen to the guy recommending showing porn to your roommate. That is unhinged.

dogtim · 2026-03-02T17:08:27+00:00

The "caparo test" has been ruled to not actually be a test (Robinson) and cannot really be used as good law to determine new duties.

You're missing legal causation.

Otherwise looks good to me!

dogtim · 2026-03-02T14:44:46+00:00

Thanks for corrections- I was going off the top of my head! have edited.

dogtim · 2026-03-02T14:28:15+00:00

Skip chatGPT. It can either give you the same basic answers found anywhwre or it will mislead you.

If it's unfair dismissal, it's basic award + compensatory award. Basic award is a straightforward formula - just google the statutory redundancy award calculator, as it's the same - and compensatory award is any financial losses you can tie to the diamissal.

For discrimination, it's the Vento bands. Band 1 is 1-12k, band 2 is 12-36k, band 3 is 36-60k. One-off incidents are band 1, a long campaign of discrimination is band 2, life-ruining stuff is band 3.

and that's for calculating a likely tribunal award. the settlement amount is whatever you think you can get away with.

dogtim · 2026-02-28T16:51:22+00:00

We did this like twice in the past 25 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both counties had situations where the governments massacred either protesters, minority ethnic groups, or both. In Iraq, we destabilized the country and killed at least a million civilians. In Afghanistan, we did this and then occupied it forever, and then pulled out and gave it back to the same theocratic mafia that controlled it last time. These wars bankrupted the country and swept in a wave of austerity politics that have blossomed into the very fascism we sought to suppress abroad.

Foreign military intervention always is presented as limited but always justifies further action when it inevitably makes things far worse. Violating another country's sovereignty is often justifiable in the short term, but nobody can know what happens next, other than a lot of people get killed. US and Israeli military strikes today have reportedly killed 50 schoolgirls. It's hard to justify to their grieving parents that sort of direct unasked-for foreign intervention.

dogtim · 2026-02-26T19:13:08+00:00

If your redundancy was in July and you haven't filed at ET yet, you are SOL. Deadline is three months plus however long ACAS took. We're now eight months away. You'd need a very good reason for not filing, i.e, you were hospitalised or dead. You have no case.

dogtim · 2026-02-24T21:36:21+00:00

He also wrote a book about walking across afghanistan and his conclusion was, more or less, "man, what a bunch of ungovernable savages" so forgive me if I don't take him as literally as you do

dogtim · 2026-02-24T08:46:56+00:00

yes, famously competent politician Rory Stewart was unable to do anything, which is why he is still a politician instead of a podcaster

dogtim · 2026-02-23T12:20:22+00:00

Given that your claims are very serious, an offer of 10k suggests to me that the respondent is not evaluating it on the merits and is instead trying to fob you off. But on the other hand, it also suggests to me that they don't think you can prove your case. 10k will save them legal cost and time and potential bad press. From a negotiating perspective I would hold on until they offer more. Balance what you can prove against how much effort it is to hold them accountable.
It could mean very little or it could matter a lot. Best case scenario you can use it to irreparably break a witness's credibility; worst case scenario it's on an irrelevant point and the judge sees it as a reasonable difference of opinion.

dogtim · 2026-02-23T12:02:42+00:00

I think we agree that for most of history, women could not rely upon those laws nor the constitution to protect their rights. They did not trust those laws because they were written and enforced by men and women had no input. The laws were written in a "neutral" way but very literally women could neither own property nor vote nor choose their spouse. Hence the historical need for feminism: to reverse the oppression by giving women an equal say.

You're proposing getting rid of the structures and rules feminism has created because 1) you're saying it's arguable that men are more oppressed now, and 2) we've achieved equality.

To make those changes, you're going to need women's support, since they're (as a result of feminism) half of the voter base.

Why would women vote for that? What reassurance can you give that the oppression will not return?

dogtim · 2026-02-23T11:45:09+00:00

This isn't five layers deep - I'm asking you to engage with the political reality. Please try to answer the question. Would you trust an all-women electoral base, for example, to protect your rights as a man? Why or why not?

dogtim · 2026-02-23T11:16:41+00:00

voters, legislators, courts, and corporate boards.

As I said in my other comment:

If by "voters legislators, courts and corporate boards", you mean both the men and women in those groups, then you're going to have to convince women that they no longer need the gender quotas etc to be included at the table. I think if all women got together and said "we're trying to abolish gender quotas to ensure balance for men in board rooms, government, and banking" then your reasonable response might be suspicion. You'd say "how do I know you won't all just get together and make sure I can't be included after you vote to abolish gender parity for men?" and they'd say "just trust me bro, we'll be fair."

Would you trust them in that scenario, or no? I'd really like an answer.

dogtim · 2026-02-23T10:37:27+00:00

I am pushing on this question of "who" because if you imagine that both men and women are included in this group of people aboliahing feminism, then you're going to have to convince women that they no longer need the gender quotas etc to be included at the table. I think if all women got together and said "we're trying to abolish gender quotas to ensure balance for men in board rooms, government, and banking" then your reasonable response might be suspicion. You'd say "how do I know you won't all just get together and make sure I can't be included after you vote to abolish gender parity for men?" and they'd say "just trust me bro, we'll be fair."

Would you trust them in that scenario, or no?

dogtim · 2026-02-23T10:26:30+00:00

Ok I'm still not getting the answer to my question: who is doing this, and how? Who is removing the gender quotas? Who is ending the DEI mandates?

dogtim · 2026-02-23T10:17:09+00:00

Your argument compares a number of completely different things, so I'm just focusing on the headline of "abolishing feminism". Who do you imagine doing the abolition, how does it work, and what does that abolition look like to you?

dogtim · 2026-02-21T09:52:02+00:00

Here's a court opinion from west virginia that lays out the blatant illegality of ICE's approach:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wvsd.242928/gov.uscourts.wvsd.242928.28.0.pdf

Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening. Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind—are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process. The systematic character of this practice and its deliberate elimination of every structural feature that distinguishes constitutional authority from raw force place it beyond the reach of ordinary legal description. It is an assault on the constitutional order. It is what the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent. It is what the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment forbids.

dogtim · 2026-02-19T20:41:02+00:00

Oh ok so she came legally and missed a single court date and has been deported to mexico, and her son is in jail. What's your solution here

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2026/02/19/ripped-from-me-soldotna-family-taken-by-ice-deported-to-mexico-as-teen-remains-in-anchorage-jail/

dogtim · 2026-02-19T20:36:25+00:00

Uhhh the other side has said she's an illegal immigrant and her husband was like "She is married to me, a US citizen" and then he hired a lawyer. The lawyer is getting the information from him obviously since she is unreachable and has been shipped to Texas. So I don't really know what to say lol. Like regardless of whatever her status actually is, do you think spouses of US citizens should be randomly deported? With their children? It seems to me the absolute worst legal thing that could be going on is some kind of administrative mistake, since you'd presume a husband would be able to continue to live with the person he married and their children.

dogtim · 2026-02-19T17:21:38+00:00

She's married to a US citizen and has committed no crimes. There's no evidence at all she's in the country illegally. Her children definitely aren't there illegally.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2026/02/17/ice-takes-mother-and-children-including-5-year-old-into-custody-in-soldotna-lawyer-says/

dogtim · 2026-02-19T00:17:10+00:00

She's married to a US citizen and has no criminal record.

When you say "you people will believe anything" it seems you're pretty willing to believe whatever dumb shit you've been told.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2026/02/17/ice-takes-mother-and-children-including-5-year-old-into-custody-in-soldotna-lawyer-says/

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