Julie Bindel & venue for MVAW talk in Nottingham

Nearly hitting the second stretch target after a few hours.

The senior managers risk little to nothing when betting with council money. They will get paid salary and their pensions will be paid over when the time comes. And they get the whole resources of the council to mount a defence.
Its a public body so they have not bought in or invested personal money nor so they get any type of share price linked renumeration.
They will be indemnified as they are acting as an agent of the council being sued and/or will have paid for an insurance policy (from public funds) which will pay out for legal costs and damages if they are found to be at fault.

They may suffer reputational damage but would not usually be at risk of loosing their jobs.

Senior management should follow the internal legal advice but there is a risk that legal will be ignored or worse legal give the answer their manager wants to hear because the instruction is find a way to do X. If legal itsself has been stonewalled the advice bias may have resulted in a belief that the council could create a banned persons list.
In the case of being sued external advice would be beneficial as the supplier has back that advice with an insurance policy. So if the council loose they would in turn have a claim against incorrect advice. (Provided the staff told the full story).

Hard to say, but no, they are skint and selling off our land and properties to try to balance the books.

I suspect there's been no further statements because they are waiting for legal action before getting more involved.

The council really are this arrogant. They are fully stonewalled and don't believe the Forstater judgement applies to them.

I don’t understand this. Have they no lawyers working for them? Are they ignoring the lawyers? Have they got the financial resources to play legal chicken with a bunch of women doing crowdfunding?

The council really are this arrogant. They are fully stonewalled and don't believe the Forstater judgement applies to them.

I am livid that taxpayers (I.e. my) money is going to be spent defending this.

Sorry to shamelessly fangirl, but Allison Bailey just donated £100! Feels like double digging! (sorry, bad gardening joke..)

...we took the decision to cancel the booking. Nottingham is an inclusive city and as a council we support our LGBT community and have committed to supporting trans rights as human rights through Stonewall. We did not want the use of one of our library buildings for this event, taking place during Pride month, to be seen as implicit support for views held by the speaker which fly in the face of our position on transgender rights.”

Totally banged to rights, and their decision appears to have been informed by stonewall.

Surely, Stonewall can't possibly have been giving people the wrong legal advice. Again.

Are they legally subject to FOI requests? I suspect Julie's initial letter will bring forth a retraction, but I hope she gets to see how this decision arose. Who made it, and why.

Dug. Target stretched from 15,000 to 20,000 as I was planting...

They messed with the wrong one. So many women have had to face this unwarranted discrimination, even after Forstatater, and it's about time Nottingham Council learned they are not above the law.

They clearly have no remorse. Their statement is still up!

Excellent. In glad there is a crowdfunder. Like most I can't afford a lot, but lots of us planting a small area will help the garden bloom.

Dug. And I'm digging enthusiastically now, so I don't have to bloody re-landscape the entire garden later.

Let's get this message out to misogynists everywhere.

You cannot stop women talking.

Thanks, donated

JB has stressed that if you can’t afford to give please do not feel in anyway obligated to chip in. Only donate if you can afford it.

The gate for Julie's garden is open. Helen Joyce has tweeted the details.

Let's get digging, Wimmin 🤗!

mobile.twitter.com/bindelj/status/1543203879764086784

Reviving this thread in case anyone is up for gardening. I believe the gate is now open.

I'm curious to know how activists found out Julie was speaking, and think she should do an FOI request to ask the library and council for the correspondence.
If it was through the bookings page then surely they wouldn't have got the wrong person?

Just on the subject of TRA fact checking

There was no decision necessary, surely? Room was hired out for a group booking. Standard occurrence.

Whoever chose to listen to the alarmist, panic mongering 'evil terfs coming to commit literal violence' advice needs training on critical thinking.

Based on the article, they adopted a neutral position - neither endorsing JB nor recommending cancellation of the booking. They handed the decision back to the actual decision makers.

Perhaps they foresaw an Allison Bailey style scenario occurring where they might be sued alongside the council? Hardly surprising as one of their staff was cross examined for the respondents in that case.

Reading the article in The Critic it mentions the LGBT Network being asked for their views. Based on the article, they adopted a neutral position - neither endorsing JB nor recommending cancellation of the booking. They handed the decision back to the actual decision makers.

It does raise the question of why the LGBT Network was asked. Possibly the decision makers wanted to avoid being responsible for making a decision themselves. Or possibly they felt insufficiently informed to make a decision.

I did wonder whether the LGBT Network was an internal staff network or an external stakeholder network.

If the special interest group° which originally gave sign off to the library was an official group which looks at the policy then its a bigger problem than poorly written policy.

°I am assuming that it was an official part of the organisation with delegated authority, otherwise the organisation is allowing individual staff to form lobby groups and circumvent the official decision making process. So either they got it wrong and all need to be replaced or senior management decided that they did not have to follow the policy.

The groups function was to look at the policy and make a professional judgement. They signed off.
Someone did not like the outcome and involved senior management. David Mellen appears to have decided that Council policy allows them the right to create a banned person list if Julie Bindel or myself went into the library to talk to each other we would be “barred from entering”.

If the council decide that 'guilt by opinion' and 'guilt by association' is enough to remove the right to enter a public library's what other services can this banned person list be used for? No practicing Roman Catholic can support same sex marraige or the wrong soul ideology can they be banned from the public housing list? Islamic pratice would result in both boys and girls objecting to mixed sex toilets can they be banned from schools?

Humour is one of our best weapons imo; comedy and a sense of good humour helps sustain a community when times are tough.

Very funny thread.

Toomie the thread is still up on Twitter, its archiving atm.