Rachel Meade - it's a win!

This is what grips my shit with the 'The GC movement is funded by the Alt Right' narrative. Rachel's EA has been crowdfunded by 5446 pledges totalling £139,345. This is an average of £25.58 per pledge. This is women digging down the back of the sofa to support a sister who is being fucked over. She still needs to find £60K. Time to dig down the sofa again.

We have to divvy up because otherwise the Rachels, Mayas, Alisons Jos and, ultimately, all of us, will lose.

I could be incorrect but usually in such cases the complainant can get an indemnity policy to cover legal costs, of proceedings, that are not covered by other sources ie fundraising.

What, it seems to me, was at issue was, costs incurred at having a legal representative during the investigation process which from what i can gather could not be claimed.

Damn.

thanks, I shall.garden a bit more.

No - costs have not been awarded (and will not be). The process as a punishment will likely be successful unfortunately!

Yes. Could she pursue for costs?

I didn't realise @RethinkingLife. Think I might need to celebrate with some gardening if the garden is still open

Oh, that is satisfying.

According to the update on her crowdfunder page she still has a substantial deficit for the legal fees so that £58K will be swallowed and she still needs more.

ETA: xd with Mmmnotsure

The exemplary damages are great for the message they send, but very little in terms of money-to-live-on. On her Crowdjustice page (with the link to the judgment) Rachel has pointed out that the Tribunal did not award costs and so there is a shortfall that she still has to find.

It seems odd on one hand to have such an excoriating judgment and on the other to leave the person who has obviously been so badly treated with legal debts.

Brilliant news. RM deserves double. I hope she manages to do something nice with at least some of it.

And yes, worrying that these organisations are so captured they will resist any of the remedy attempts, doubtless convinced that they have the moral high ground while they do so.

They won't risk such an OVERT partisan approach. They'll be more subtle. Most women pushed out because they believe in scientific reality won't take a case to ET - you need to be enormously resilient to do so.

Surely judgements such as this do need to at some point make Ministers wake up and realise what happens when people adhering to one non-evidence based cult all end up in senior leadership positions in an organisation and are determined to push things that are against safeguarding law. Surely some senior managers should be held accountable for this pretty damning loss? Why has no-one lost their job? The non apology word salad in response is not good enough for a start.

I don't think judges toss words like 'spiteful' and 'vindictive' around lightly.

I have very low tolerance for legalese, but I read the judgement. Much of it fell out of my head, pretty much as soon as I'd read it, but SWE seemed to be roundly criticised for their intransigence following the original judgement.

They deal with some of the most vulnerable people in the country. They receive a lot of money from the taxpayer. Shouldn't the minister responsible for them be saying something?

@SaffronSpice @Snowypeaks The wording was “recommended that”

But advised Meade should be sent training materials. So no sanctions possible, and SWE can and probably will ignore that.

However, i doubt they will risk such a partisan approach in future complaints.

Farrell gets a good kicking… judge held on “spiteful”, “vindictive” behaviour!!!!

Contempt of court?

Remedy judgment has now appeared on RM's Crowdjustice page.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:0cc63664-02e2-4708-b95a-f546d81eef51

Looks like the person to contact is the (interim) Chair of the Board of Social Work England, Dr Andrew McCulloch.

'Contact us:
1 North Bank
Blonk Street
Sheffield, S3 8JY
Telephone: +44 (0)808 196 2274
Email: [email protected]'

It's the Chair's job to hold the CEO to account.

https://www.socialworkengland.org.uk/about/board/board-members/

'Looked after' children are over represented in identifying themselves as trans. I don't have a link but one of the Julies (not Andrews) has talked about this. Considering how captured SWE is, this is hardly surprising. I wonder which is chicken, which is egg? Are SW allies influencing their vulnerable kids or vice versa, or a bit of both.

It's hard to think of a cohort of children more marginalised and vulnerable than those in care, especially if you throw in abuse and/or disability and/or ND. If one of these kids falls in with a glitter family there could be literally no-one to apply the brakes for them. The SW will be either cheering them on or too scared to do anything about a possible car crash.

Haven't there been instances of SW threatening families who have been reluctant to affirm when a child has claimed to be trans. Even threatening to remove them from their home?

Sport England's strategic lead for equality, Aedan Wolton?

Any reason to think AW has moved on? I'd like to think Sport England is considering the impact of AW on SWE and WCC, and, to some extent, enabling them to bring themselves into disrepute but I see no evidence of that degree of reflective capacity.

I've just read the whole (excellent) judgement but was struck at one point - both @LoobiJee and@Karensalright noted the judge being "surprised" that trans issues were apparently not discussed at either the council nor at SWE.

Judge Nicolle was an associate, then a partner at Dentons from 2001-13. I know the Dentons pro-bono report on trans stuff wasn't published till 2019, which probably means their relationship with the trans organisation they were working with started around 2017-18. He then went on to be a partner at the litigation specialist firm Stewarts until he left to become a judge in 2019. Stewarts records on its website not just the annual celebration of Pride, but also LGBT+ History Month (https://www.stewartslaw.com/news/stewarts-celebrates-lgbt-history-month/)

I can imagine that coming from his own work experiences, he would have sat through endless DEI trainings and HR-led diversity, pride and LGBTQ+ visibility events. I'm sure he found the assertion by the council and the SWE employees that it just wasn't discussed or talked about at work to be "surprising" aka. judicial language for total bullshit.

Are there sanctions if SWE don't (for example) get the training sorted?
Has this case drawn attention to some breach of their statutory duty?

Fantastic for Rachel and very well deserved vindication.

However, the bigger issue IMO is that SWE are absolutely captured, even their latest statement makes this clear.

Do we really think 58K is going to change anything? It's clear they have an agenda very different to their actual supposed function, but who is going to hold them to account? Where's the Minister for Social Care in this?

Penalising social workers for talking about the reality of biological sex not only is against their free speech but renders it impossible for them to properly do the job they are supposed to do. Sex is important for safeguarding. If you can't name it, you can't safeguard effectively.

SWE seems to be captured by an ideology to the point that their main aim is the furtherance of that ideology not the protection of those needing social workers. The fact that WCC issued a much more gracious apology and indication they would learn from this is good - but SWE are meant to be the ones holding to account, not the one forcing front line workers to adhere to an evidence free ideology that can be harmful to vulnerable people (as we've seen in Cass).

What's actually going to make them change? I'm sure by now it's only true believers in positions of power in SWE and their lack of apology to RM couldn't make it clearer that they fully intent to ignore the court. Does anyone think they're going to do proper training about belief (not 'stonewall-like' fantasy training), or even better how the inability to challenge beliefs renders safeguarding impossible? I.e. renders social workers unable to do their job?

Who's making sure they change? Because from where I'm sitting it's no-one, and safeguarding is the casualty.

Congratulations Rachel. £58k isn't much for two years of hell, but every penny is fully deserved.

Sooner or later, organisations have to start joining the dots made by this steady flow of victories at ETs / EATs over the right to state our beliefs, and open their eyes to the fact that Stonewall's guidance is not just worthless, it's actively damaging to their reputation and their bottom line.

Here's some training for free, SWE: read the Equality Act, note what is and what is not a protected characteristic, and remember that bullying women for reiterating biological facts is an expensive mistake.

Any proper journalist ought to be tripping across to Sport England to ask them about their EDI and whether there are any lessons to be learned.

I wonder what happened to the original whistleblower (who I seem to remember didn't have to testify)?

According to LegalFeminist on Twitter the remedy judgment won't be available until tomorrow.