The Free Speech Union has won its biggest ever legal victory at the Employment Tribunal, securing significant damages for Carl Borg-Neal, a dyslexic Lloyds bank manager who was sacked following a workplace free speech row. The Telegraph has more.
Carl Borg-Neal can’t get out his words. Tears fall down his cheeks and he is overcome by an involuntary verbal tic, as if he is choking or has momentarily forgotten how to speak. He is 59 years old and out of work, having been sacked by his employer, Lloyds Bank, for inadvertently blurting out the N word during an anti-racism training session.
An employment tribunal ruled that Lloyds had unfairly dismissed Mr Borg-Neal and discriminated against him on account of his dyslexia, which leads him to “spurt things out before he loses his train of thought”. He has been awarded damages of almost £500,000 – combined with Lloyds’ legal costs, and tax, the bank faces a bill close to £1 million.
The cash is of some comfort to Mr Borg-Neal, a vindication of his campaign to clear his name. What he really wanted, however, was his old job back and he wishes the bank would simply say sorry for sacking him. Without the apology, the allegation that he is racist hangs over his head.
“It is kind of a double-edged sword. When I set out on this legal claim, I said to my mum: ‘If I have to sell my house, I don’t care because this is about clearing my name. Lloyds were calling me racist and that is certainly something I am not and something I have never been,” said Mr Borg-Neal, who is also a Conservative councillor in his local borough council in Andover, Hants.
After a career spanning 30 years with Lloyds and its affiliates, Mr Borg-Neal believes that the bank has treated him like a “pariah” – he was told not to contact former colleagues and friends in the aftermath of that fateful training session on July 16 2021. It has taken Mr Borg-Neal more than two years to win his compensation through a courtroom ordeal that, at one stage, risked him facing financial ruin.
“I feel very discriminated against,” he said. “I often wonder if I wasn’t a white middle-aged male would I have had to go through everything I went through. There is no way of telling. But when I talk to my friends – and as you can imagine a good many are white, middle-aged and male – we all agree that is the worst thing you can be right now. You are bottom of everything.”
The employment tribunal vindicated Mr Borg-Neal in a 46-page judgment that raises serious questions about how major institutions such as Lloyds Bank tackle “very sensitive issues” that arise during diversity training.
It was about an hour into the online training session – attended virtually by about 100 Lloyds managers – during a discussion about “intent vs effect” that Mr Borg-Neal asked how to handle a situation should he hear someone from an ethnic minority use a word that would be offensive if used by someone not of the same ethnicity. When the trainer did not appear to understand the question, Mr Borg-Neal said by way of explanation: “The most common example being [the] use of the N word in the black community.”
“Unfortunately,” pointed out the tribunal, “the claimant used the full word rather than the abbreviation.”
The bank accepted the comment was made without malice and that the question was valid. The employment judge said Mr Borg-Neal’s dyslexia was a “strong factor causing how he expressed himself in a session and in his use of the full word rather than finding a means to avoid it”.
The trainer was left “badly distressed” and took almost a week off work. But some colleagues at the training session questioned her reaction. According to one attendant, Mr Borg-Neal was ”very much reprimanded in front of us all and when [he] tried to apologise or explain he was threatened with ‘you will be thrown off the course’”.
Another said: “I was shocked by the manner and tone used by one presenter to a colleague. After saying at the beginning this would be a safe environment and it is acknowledged we may make mistakes, she launched into a vitriolic attack. Whilst I do not condone what the colleague said … I believe he was trying to ask a valid question to aid understanding.”
Mr Borg-Neal was taken aback by the trainer’s reaction. “She immediately went mad,” said Mr Borg-Neal, “I immediately tried to apologise. I said I didn’t mean to upset anybody. I tried to reword the question but she was just shouting at me. She was basically telling me to be quiet and if I didn’t shut up I would be thrown off the course. I bit the bullet and went quiet.”
He remembers his feelings at the time, a mixture of “upset and anger” – upset that he had caused distress and angry that the trainer had “dealt with it in such an aggressive way”.
A complaint reached Lloyds HR team and disciplinary procedures activated, although Mr Borg-Neal was never suspended and – as he points out – he continued to mentor two junior colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds until his final dismissal in December 2021, prompting his lengthy legal battle for justice.
Worth reading in full.
It goes without saying that everyone at the FSU is delighted that Carl has been able to obtain justice. Not only did he lose a job where he’d found he could excel, in spite of his disability, but during the initial, unnecessarily lengthy disciplinary process and the legal battle that followed his mental and physical health deteriorated. He now suffers back pain brought on by the stress and takes two pills a day for the anxiety, including a sleeping pill to get him through the night.
You can join the Free Speech Union here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
A friend of mine suffered from this. He wanted to ask his wife to pass the salt. But instead he said “I wish you were dead you fat pig”. ——–He has been divorced for over 12 years now.
A lot of thumbs down for me then and my little joke. So called Free Speech fans are not fond of me having the same free speech it would seem, and have no sense of humour into the bargain.
Haha, no the resident Miserable Git Association don’t do humour. Careful how you go or you too will be labelled ”unhinged”.
Just try being up before the larks and wishing fellow posters a ”Good morning” and see where it gets you…Cheeriness is massively frowned upon around these parts…which just makes us do it all the more, obv. 
Bonus points for not being one of these ‘mono-emotion’ type posters though. Dreary AF, imo.
Cheers me old mate———–“What did the man say when he fell off the train? ———HARD LINES. ——–ha ha ha aha jeez. ———The old ones are the best what?
Being a ‘Free Speech fan’ doesn’t mean you can’t disapprove of what someone says, that would be ridiculous.
And If someone doesn’t think a joke is funny, it doesn’t mean they don’t have a sense of humour. Everyone has different tastes in humour, just as in music, theatre, films, food, etc.
Then do what the rest of us do; Scroll on by!
I thought it was very funny and laughed out loud when I read it causing my wife to ask what was laughing at. I read it to her and she didn’t laugh
That is exactly the point. ———Some people think something is funny (like the Marx Brothers) and others think it isn’t funny at all. But if you don’t think something is funny then don’t laugh but please don’t try to say I should not be making the joke. ————-It is a JOKE for gods sake.
Who said you shouldn’t be making the joke?
I think it’s because you misgendered the wife – should have been ‘fat sow’.
The Holy Community of Perpetual Offence have all had a sense of humour bypass – it’s a membership requirement.
I shall make sure I put a “Trigger Warning” on any future jokes.
A few years ago my neighbourhood had to deal with a woman who had episodes of “spurting things out before she lost her train of thought”. After each episode she was amnesic about it and embarrassed by what she learnt she had said during the episode. The trouble was that these episodes lasted months, often involved hospitalisation, and the “things”, rather than being odd offensive words, were wild false allegations of a serious nature against her neighbours, family and employers. Fortunately the police understood more of the background and dismissed her multiple accusations, and those of her circle of friends, as being caused by the ramblings of a known habitual delusional fantasist. Unfortunately, various victimhood support groups and vigilantes became involved and got ensnared in her fantasies, including at times criticizing the police for not bringing charges against her alleged attackers. Dozens of people became involved. The whole thing got bogged down in a swamp of medical complaints, cover-ups, psychiatric modelling and wokery. The scandal eventually fizzled out, with considerable egg on the face of those people who eventually realised they had participated in a psychotic delirium and tried to hide their involvement. However, there was a hard core of die-hards who steadfastly refused to face up to reality. I have gradually come to believe that any instant there are countless such “Salem” situations like this being acted out across the country.
Sounds like what happened with Covid.
Well done Toby and the FSU. God Bless. Keep fighting the good fight. Great win.
I am ofcourse assuming that Daily Sceptic readers have a healthy sense of humour.
I have a great sense of humour thanks. It just doesn’t extend to laughing at unfunny, irrelevant comments based on a completely false analogy.
Oh dear————-Yet all who comment here are fans of the Free Speech Union and Daily Sceptic because they like the idea of people being able to say what they think in a free society. They also probably don’t like the idea of comedians having their act shutdown by the wokery that pervades all of society these days. ——–Yet you are doing exactly that to my joke. You disapprove of it. You would shut it down. It seems to me you are exactly the same as the wokerati that you probably scoff at on all other occasions.
No, he (or she)’s just a sad git.
Hope with a payout like that a few bob is directed to DS.
Back in the early 60s my parents took on a (mostly black) dog from a rescue kennel. The kennel said his name was N____. We called him Trigger instead.
You had no guts
We once broke down in Versailles. The old guy who stopped to help us (and who did actually fix our van, thank goodness, it was the first Saturday in August, no mechanics anywhere) turned out to have once been a famous racing driver. Long story short, he invited us home to his enormous villa, just five minutes away, for Orangina and coffee. Meanwhile, he regailed us with tales, including one about his three cats, named Cannabis, Cocaine and Opium.
“My posh neighbours hate me,” he said with a cheeky grin.
“Every evening I wander the streets, softly calling their names!”
True story. This was during ThePandemic™, when all non-essential travel (hahahaha eff off) was apparently VERBOTEN. We could tell our friendly racing driver didn’t give a flying f*uck about it.
Nah. Just not stupid.
I’ve got a better story than naming the dog Trigger (IMO):
I went to our doctors’ when I was about 15 or so (1970 ish) to get a hayfever jab. The receptionist was calling out to the waiting room which patient should go through next.
‘You’re next Sambo.’: this to a young black chap.
The rest of us froze.
The receptionist picked up on the feeling: ‘No, no. That’s his name.’
deleted, not self-censored!
That’s the name of the dog in the film, The Dam Busters, which is now sometimes censored out when shown on television.
It’s crazy that people get so offended by the word regardless of context and intention, and The Daily Sceptic (and we commenters too) dare not print the word, yet people like Dave Chapelle can use the word with no problem, and it’s not even the most controversial thing he said!
https://youtu.be/kxUDd6rOS38?si=gACpg-tk0D7ejc_n
Not only the name of the dog in the film. It was Wing Co Guy Gibson’s dog’s name IRL.
Yes. It feels weird pussyfooting around the word. But too many people don’t get that the word means ‘black’ which is just descriptive – not racist.
If you really want to explore the use of the word I recommend the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and -Huckleberry Finn which are available un-Bowdlerised on the Gutenberg Project. The books are littered with the word and it’s quite clear from the context that the author (pen name Mark Twain) does not approve of the racism it represents – but you can’t tell those stories without it.
Woop woop!
Well done Toby and all the good people at the FSU.
There is however something seriously wrong when we have to celebrate the affirmation of common sense and simple, basic decency.
I do hope the female, nutjob trainer is out of work because a trainer lacking in social skills and empathy is working in the wrong industry. How long before she strikes again?
Mr Carl Borg-Neal – don’t look back, Lloyd’s bank don’t care and certainly don’t want you. Consider this a wonderful victory and forget this dreadful organisation.
Yes I’m well chuffed to hear about such a positive outcome for this chap so huge kudos for Toby and co. I too would like to know what happened to said cowbag and if she got her just desserts. Nobody should have the ability to put somebody through what she did to Carl and have zero accountability and punishment. I remember reading this story when DS first published it and I was disgusted then.
Her apoplectic reaction was way over the top; this was a course discussing the damn topic FFS.
It’s obviously wrong to throw the word out in public, especially when directed at someone specific. But if a black person says it, then it’s absolutely fine. They’re not short of insults for white people. Hypocrisy.
But even when you use the euphemism ‘the N word’, each listener quite likely says the word silently in their heads.
Don’t think of an elephant!
You lose.
A purple one.
His name’s Gerald.
Elephant’s Gerald.
Well done to all involved.
I believe the FSU is a force for good.
As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t the feel good story that everybody seems to think it is. This was won on the basis of a perceived disability i.e. dyslexia. It seems the only reason he wasn’t judged to be an evil, white, male supremacist is because he himself held a victim card. He used a word; using a word can only show intent or belief when used with context that frames intent or belief. Within the context he used the word ‘nigger’ there could not possibly be derived any racial meaning. The fact the guy was dyslexic is of zero relevance. Using the same belief system used to sack this guy, using any word that describes anything unsavoury is a sackable offense e.g. Nazi. I’m not clapping just yet.
Exactly right. It is beyond absurd that the diversity industry has claimed a particular classification of language for this one word. It is not magical. When you say it the Grand Wizard does not appear in a puff of smoke. If it was uniquely offensive then all of the rap recordings that use it so extensively would be banned and the comedians and actors that throw it into their speech would be cancelled. No, it is just a stick to beat white people with and this case should have been won on the basis of that, not because of the plaintiff’s dyslexia.
Note to self: get more sleep.
A week off work because someone upset you good heavens no wonder you can’t get anything done in this country anymore. What a whimp. Smelling salts anyone….?
The PC blob followed by it’s successor the Wokerati played the racist card for decades.
Now we have tribalism.
Progress!
“The trainer was left “badly distressed” and took almost a week off work.”
The poor wee lamb – clearly management failure in hiring someone not suited for the rôle and not ensuring adequate training and supervision.
Well played, FSU. Keep up the good fight.