Methinks Lady Acton doth protest too much….

EA never considered a retired judge to lead the inquiry. Oh well. He had no idea about Boulton being chosen by MR until the public announcement on 11th February 2010, although all selections had been made by 18th December. This surprised quite a few I think. He said that the view of Trevor Davies and others at UEA was that there was some bad blood between Boulton and UEA and it wasn’t likely to be a very happy choice for UEA but they had to wear it. The PRES asked later if he’d not wanted to say something to MR about this. He insisted that he trusted MR – though elsewhere he said he’d never met him before and had barely heard of him. Yet it only took between 30th November and 3rd December to approach MR and seal the deal. From then it was reputationally vital to keep the whole MRG at arm’s length.

I don’t think Acton’s statements here are credible. He alternates between knowing everything in great detail to knowing nothing about extremely important things he should have known.

Boulton’s relationships with those people Steve lists above, his proximity to them since 1986, should be examined in detail.

The inquiry itself needs to be investigated as a potential abuse of the taxpayers’ money. It didn’t uncover the truth. It left more questions unanswered than it answered. The university’s reputation was not salvaged.

He seems to have been the linchpin rather than Muir Russell, who seems more like an empty suit.

I wonder if Boulton might even have been involved in discussion with UEA first, about how to staff and shape the inquiry, before Muir Russell was announced? That might explain why Boulton seems to have been so central to the whole inquiry, even though he was announced as a fill-in appointment??

Looks like this is a career trait rather than a one-off.