Women's Hour - TRA barrister on

The overall strategy is to create "uncertainty" around the Supreme Court judgment. This is being done on many fronts, and lost legal cases in response to the judgment will be part of it, and will be spun to create the "biased and unfair" narrative.

Woman's Hour also appear to be playing this game. They're going to spend the week creating a narrative that there are competing interpretations of the judgment and from this it can be seen that it must be unclear.

The current goal, at the moment, it to use the uncertainty to cause paralysis and to argue that there should be no implementations made of the judgment, those can only come after there's lots of resultant new litigation, and who knows what the outcome of such cases might be? The goal is "business as usual, ignore the judgment".

And if a male colleague is repeatedly breaching women's legal protections and women complain to their employer about that, then yes, obviously, the employer has the same duty to deal with that employee as if they were being inappropriate or invasive towards women colleagues in any other way.

Otherwise I'd think the women in question would have a pretty good legal case of enabled discrimination and harassment.

Who could appeal is an interesting question.

The basic rule is that nobody other than the parties to the case can appeal. That's ScotGov and FWS only - not the intervenors, and certainly not the failed would-be intervenors.

It would be decidedly odd for FWS to appeal a case they won. I'm not sure if it would be technically possible.

ScotGov have said they won't.

But even if they wanted to, I'm not entirely certain that they could, because purpose of the the ECtHR is as a barrier to malign governments. So individuals and non-government organisations can bring a case against their own government. But generally a government can't bring a case, they can only be a respondent not an appellant. In very limited circumstances one state can bring a case against another state - but I can't find any definitive info in the rules about whether any type of regional government can bring a case against the overarching government of their own state.

If it falls under Health and Safety legislation to provide single sex toilets and to tell staff they have an obligation to use the correct sex ones then I don't know how you can claim an employer doesn't have a responsibility if a staff member abuses this?!

Employers have duty of care obligations. These cover working alone and leaving a premises late at night in some circumstances.

If a staff member is KNOWN to be using the incorrect sex toilets AGAINST health and safety rules, duty of care would automatically be involved. Cos that's how health and safety legislation works.

Women take their young sons into the ladies cos they can't go for a piss and wash their hands without assistance more than for safety reasons.

They do this because they often take on looking after young children whilst the men work longer hours. Even if male partners are about, the woman will still take on this role because of either sexism or because the child prefers it because their primary carer is their mother.

This really shows up where there's a bunch of males who don't have caring roles and have no bloody idea of the lives of women, what they do and why they do it.

Safety is part of it, but it comes much more secondary. And that's down to strange adults around children, rather than children being alone.

Adults are not children. Even if they are immature.

Interested in the repeated assertion that employers have no duty to 'police' toilets (ie prevent men from wilfully breaking women's legal protections, their privacy and dignity and right to a single sex space.)

I'd like to know what the EHRC think about this, and about women's ability to require that their employers do prevent male colleagues from this act of dominance, disrespect and prejudice, and meet women's need for an accessible space. As it should be very clear by now to the EHRC and everyone else that things like 'good will' and 'respect for others' and 'respect for the law' isn't in the dictionary of this political movement, even apparently the ones working in the court system.

RMW has a good voice for radio. A voice that tells all the listeners what sex he is and what demands he has regarding accessing women’s spaces.

They do our work for us.

All my comments were lost in the thread that got deleted.

I probably should have screenshot them, but I was too busy trying to type and listen whilst stirring my cauldron.

That will teach me to try and multi task.

Reviews not great:

Sonia Sodha

Robin Moira White stands by use of the word “evil” in relation to EHRC chair Kishwer Faulkner on Women’s Hour. Very disappointing & unprofessional from a practicing barrister - completely inappropriate language to use about a public servant doing her job.

Is that the barrister who is not actually working as a barrister? So are they still a barrister while not working as a barrister and living in Spain

If this is the case, how can RWM and that retired judge Victoria something be going down this route?

Are they taking back-handers from the fox-killer?

Do they think they’re scaring us?

I can guess ....

They have to have been a party to the action to appeal, I think - the fair hearing relates to the actual case, not an application to intervene.

*being taken

So it's actually only Scotgov who can apply then as Mr Mcloud and Mrs whittle were not the ones Ben f taken to the Supreme Court?

Many of the supposedly "legal" arguments about why TWAW and can't be stopped from doing whatever they fancy remind me of this from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

I took it that McCloud will be the party who is claiming their human rights have been infringed by the UK. I'm not quite sure the grounds, whether it's to do with the application to intervene bring denied or something else.

And lives in Ireland anyway, I think.

That perfection. 👌🏼

Apologies again 2005 not 2002!

I’ll get my coat!

‘But the book is equally disappointing in almost all matters of substance. … but the rest of the book suffers from a pervasive tendentiousness, coupled with legal analysis that is either weak or simply absent.’

😂🙄 That’s the problem when you try to wrangle and squash the law into fitting your POV and your desires, instead of simply accepting the law as it is.

Apologies - there have been several cases since 2001 where the ECtHR have found against the U.K. although there remains a notable downward trend (particularly since SC was established). Unbelievably the Mclibel decision was 2002!

So, while I respect a right to appeal to the ECtHR, to repeat the great Prof Phoenix ‘good luck with that’

But McCloud stood down last year. Can they still work as a lawyer?

Enjoy. Excoriating.

https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/09/02/a-practical-guide/#comment-16980

Peter Daly is a solicitor. He first got involved in Maya Forstater's case and then on from there.

For the SC case, the Lesbian interveners gave written submissions.

The main barristers were Aidan O'Neill for FWS and Ben Cooper, late of this parish, for Sex Matters.

And for those arguing that the trans side weren't represented, they had the Scottish Government (with in effect bottomless taxpayers' money), Amnesty International (that small, little-known organisation) - and the EHRC weren't exactly helpful to FWS.