Mermaids vs LGB Alliance and Charity Commissioner - First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) Thread 4

Good new! Charity Commission launch statutory inquiry!

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7366dbdc-723e-11ed-8a5b-f385de7508fe?shareToken=017ef927cb635d313b87cd284535f1f7

Curiously enough, I was just listening to this yesterday. The final episode sheds some different light onto it. The whole thing is rotten, but Rev Percy may not be as innocent as he makes out. However the accountability (or lack of) is appalling.

BBC Sounds - The Feud - www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/p0dg2ygc

Since I started the derail there's a bit more detail about the case here for anyone interested.

Classic DARVO in the last sentence.

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"Percy, who left his post in April, said: “This is a devastating finding against a charity that was clearly out of control. It is beyond doubt now that a small group of trustees at Christ Church were determined to get rid of me at any cost … Alumni and donors will be shocked that £6.6m – money ostensibly earmarked for education – was instead squandered on lawyers and PR agencies. This was then covered up in the accounts.”
The individuals responsible should be held to account, he added. “Christ Church cannot recover from this episode until that happens.”
A spokesperson for Christ Church said: “In very complex and constantly changing circumstances, trustees made decisions which, having taken professional advice, they judged to be in the best interests of Christ Church.
“Many of the costs were incurred as a result of Dr Percy’s refusal to settle with a governing body which had lost trust and confidence in him.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/nov/10/charity-commission-criticises-oxford-college-christ-church-over-mismanagement

Random derail here but Private Eye has a story about mismanagement at Christchurch College Oxford.
I've no idea of the back story and why they were so keen to get rid of the Dean but the college appears to have spent £6.6m on legal and PR fees to do so.
They have reported the costs in their accounts as "teaching, research and residential expenditure".
The charity commission have been critical, stating this reporting "has the potential to mislead" and further "We consider that the actions of the trustees at Christchurch amount to mismanagement and/or misconduct".

I'm just posting this because I find the dishonesty and lack of accountability so shocking.

Don't hold too much hope or expectation of any meaningful censure if Mermaids.

@Itsalloutofwhack not as far as I am aware. It may be several months as there will be a lot of evidence to go through.

Was an indication given of when the ruling (if that’s the right word) would be made?

There don't seem to be any replies which aren't critical.

Sorry @Tallisker - I didn't realise you'd already mentioned Dennis' complaint.

Dennis Kavanagh has also officially complained about him to the Lord Chamberlain, I think.

Not only has he been appallingly rude to a very well-respected KC with many years experience in this area of law, but he is commenting on a case which is still active.

As an MP he should be aware of how inappropriate this is.

Argh. I got trapped in the AI auto net as I posted a link to Crowdjustice (GLP are the organisers of the crowdfunding for the case).

Stonewall were deffo included in the early news stories about the case (circa June 2021). Hopefully my previous comment will come through eventually as it contains three links.

Am I correct in remembering that although it was Mermaids in court, the "Good Law" project were somehow involved behind the scenes? I'm sure Stonewall were originally involved too (which would have made more sense) but they quickly became uninvolved?

Got to love this reply!

twitter.com/msmainstay/status/1590868255962693633?s=61&t=aBESCQCHe1mqTX1gYXQ8kA

Even restricted, the replies are pretty brutal.

Dennis Kavanagh has made a formal complaint about him according to his Substack

Is it just me, or does he look a bit worse for wear in that picture?

That guy is such a dick. The idea that she was finding him a challenge is absurd. He came across across as an arrogant knob on the stand and unnecessarily delayed proceedings by giving a lengthy political speech for every response.

Article in the Times today about John Nicolson attacking Karon Monaghan on twitter:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/394930da-6203-11ed-8adc-caffed0685f5?shareToken=6fc18d0df8963647666ee06bcf1d917e

Yes, it was interesting that people felt so free to talk about it. I didn't bring the subject up at any time, but there were a couple of women who kept seeing things through GC eyes. I do think people have stopped being so scared to say anything.

I'm really sorry you experienced that. I hope I would be alert to the homophobia in that situation, and speak up.

Unfortunately many lesbian and gay people do support a pride and of course it's hard to see who 'isn't' there- which is why the 'Get the L Out' etc protests have been so important to counter the likes of Christina's claims.

Reassuring though, that so many felt free to speak against transgenderism. I'm having a very mixed experience when I raise it.

So sorry, I posted on the wrong thread. All the above was about the current Scottish case.

In this context, know what I resent the most? I resent the fact that I'm becoming what they say I am. I was always on the left, I considered myself progressive. I've championed LGB rights; I am B myself. Bisexual, and I have my own initial in the alphabet soup, yet nothing on earth would nowadays persuade me to wear a rainbow lanyard.

Women who think like me are now being called bigots, on the wrong side of history, affiliated with the alt right and extreme republican Christianity - the people now trying to strip women of their own bodily autonomy and rights to abortion: the very abhorrent misogynistic stand I've spent my entire adult life fighting against. It makes me want to scream. How the fuck have they managed to DARVO us quite this effectively?

My ob gyn was a man. He'd seen me through IVF, I knew him and trusted him implicitly. He did a stretch and sweep. He was an excellent doctor. And I've been a victim of SA, so wasn't always sure how I would feel about this (I wouldn't want a man performing a pap test, for instance).

So - I don't mind, in cases where there's a professional, trusting relationship, being treated, even intimately, by a man. Would I shy or cringe from being treated by a trans woman? Yes, I would. And that's precisely because the kind of men who are insinuating themselves into women's intimate care on the proviso that they're female 'just like us', coupled with the reams of terrible stories about middle-aged transitioners motivated by fetishism and paraphilia, makes me feel 'unsafe'.

I'm not succumbing to the ridiculous arguments of the TRA lobby that GC women are stigmatizing an entire group and claiming all trans women are fetishists. But any idiot knows that predatory men WILL take advantage; that they are determined, very inventive when it comes to gaining access to their victims, and will go to incredible lengths to do so. In the meantime, they're getting their cocks out in women's lavs and filming themselves proclaiming 'you can't stop us, so rah).

Now, I'm the bigot. The right laugh, saying the left are eating themselves, but this isn't any 'left' I've ever experienced in my lifetime. They've done a serious fucking number on us. And yes, I'm really fucking bitter.

lgb comes across as exactly one “amorphous lump” to everyone not privy

Yes. This is one of the most pernicious aspects of this political movement, it is one it uses shamelessly in its own interests. It colonises a movement. It forces out all dissenters (in this case excluding homosexual lesbians and homosexual men from the word and movement for them), and then it claims that it alone speaks for the group they have hijacked, and that no one exists that disagrees with them because look - they are the homosexual movement and not one homosexual disagrees!

(Because they've all been disposed of.)

Women's spaces have worked the same way. 'There are no women with these issues' (because we have successfully excluded them.)

Evil is not a word I use lightly, but this is. The sheer nastiness towards others and the nicely spoken and revoltingly hypocritical and deceitful word salad as other people's spaces, rights and identities are destroyed, is wicked. The manipulativeness of shouting 'be kind!' and 'be inclusive!' while doing this to others is wicked. There are solutions that could work for all. This movement insists they can only be happy if they can see the losers suffer. Wtf is this being indulged?

I'm adding my voice to this, too (and as a bisexual woman I've never really seen myself as being part of the 'umbrella'). It is homophobic. It neglects the extremely brave efforts of women the likes of 'Get the L Out', who stood up against this mess in a climate in which it's incredibly difficult to do so. We saw the public censure they faced.

This kind of attitude is also tantamount to the old-as-the-hills rhetoric that women are always to blame for the misdemeanors of men. Even if they can't, they try to make excuses for it. 'But maybe he has depression .....'

I, for one, am sick to death of that particular noise, and mindful of a comment from a left-leaning lesbian feminist I saw on here a couple of years ago. She said that nowadays she would feel safer at a BNP rally than at pride. And it's alarming how far right this particular political pendulum has swung. Because this can't be recognized as anything other than male rights activism.

This coming from a lesbian - the very people pride/Stonewall et al existed to protect in the first place, who fought with them, who raised their organization to the prominence it now has. What a slap in the face and enormous betrayal this must be.