Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Julie Bindel has won against Nottingham Council

83 replies

Birdsweepsin · 07/10/2022 13:01

juliebindel.substack.com/p/i-won-my-case-against-nottingham?r=7w54f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

...and the Council are going to review their EDI policies!

OP posts:
yourhairiswinterfire · 07/10/2022 15:28

NCCs statement/apology.

www.mynottinghamnews.co.uk/statement-from-nottingham-city-council/

Well done Julie!

Datun · 07/10/2022 15:35

Good. They were clearly wrong. Well done to Julie.

IcakethereforeIam · 07/10/2022 16:59

From NCC's statement/apology 'procedurally unlawful'?, I understood it to be unlawfully unlawful. This sounds like it would have been okay to cancel, except they fucked up the process. Just ticked a few of the wrong boxes otherwise it was fiine to do what they did.

Are they being weasels or am I just being over sensitive/misunderstanding something?

RoseslnTheHospital · 07/10/2022 17:05

It does sound weaselly, as if they'd done some different process that cancelling would have been ok. They conspicuously don't say it was wrong for them to have cancelled or that they shouldn't have cancelled the event. Just that they cancelled in an unlawful way.

They have also been told to pay the costs etc. don't know why they say they've "agreed" to do so.

Cherryblossoms85 · 07/10/2022 17:13

There is no such thing as procedurally unlawful. It's either lawful or it's not .

ArabellaScott · 07/10/2022 17:18

'procedurally' is doing the same work here as 'a little bit'.

donquixotedelamancha · 07/10/2022 17:25

Brilliant, well done Julie.

This has proceeded very quickly in for a legal wrangle- clearly as soon as the lawyers got involved it became clear there wasn't a leg to stand on.

I find it bizarre that this happened in the first place. Either the councillors and civil servants involved all lacked a basic understanding of the equality act or the politicians thought it was worth pissing public money away to make a point.

I'm not sure which option is worse.

LoobiJee · 07/10/2022 17:25

yourhairiswinterfire · 07/10/2022 15:28

What a mealy-mouthed crew they are at NCC. “procedurally unlawful”?

So that translates as….whoopsadaisy we may have inadevertently tripped over some trivial procedural stuff but we are not going to give the full picture to our citizens, tell the full truth - which is that they were: narrow-minded, too lazy to do any research or thinking, sanctimonious, discriminatory and morally wrong.

I think Julie let them off far too lightly letting them get away with that statement.

LoobiJee · 07/10/2022 17:41

RoseslnTheHospital · 07/10/2022 17:05

It does sound weaselly, as if they'd done some different process that cancelling would have been ok. They conspicuously don't say it was wrong for them to have cancelled or that they shouldn't have cancelled the event. Just that they cancelled in an unlawful way.

They have also been told to pay the costs etc. don't know why they say they've "agreed" to do so.

I think they are kicking themselves that they made a public statement setting out the reason why they were refusing to allow her to enter one of their buildings.

If they had lied about the real reason and had come up with some other plausible excuse for cancelling, like a problem with the building’s plumbing, then they could have got away with it.

But because they were so convinced they were on the moral high ground in disapproving of her opinions, they believed it was right and proper to withhold access to a public building on the basis of not liking a citizen’s legally held beliefs, and they were so blinded by their own sanctimony it didn’t even cross their minds, they didn’t stop to think even for a second, that discriminating against a citizen is not only morally wrong, it’s also breaking the law.

Justasmallgless · 07/10/2022 17:43

Bloody brilliant. Thank god for Julie and her legal team for standing up for free speech and women's rights. 👏👏👏

FlibbertyGiblets · 07/10/2022 17:55

Well done Julie.

As an aside, I am copying their statement from today, 7th Oct 2022 here, note that I have bolded a part of it:

'On 24 June 2022, Nottingham City Council cancelled a booking by Nottingham Women for Change to use a space at Aspley Library for a talk by the author and journalist Julie Bindel.
Nottingham City Council later communicated its decision in a statement published on 25 June 2022.
Nottingham City Council now accepts that its decision to cancel the event was procedurally unlawful. Nottingham City Council apologises to Ms Bindel and Nottingham Women for Change for cancelling the event in this way and for the inconvenience caused as a result of this decision.
It has agreed to make payment to Julie Bindel, Nottingham Women for Change and to ticket holders in respect of their reasonable losses incurred as a result of the cancellation of the event.
Nottingham City Council has agreed that, if Nottingham Women for Change seeks to make a booking at any Nottingham City Council venue by way of a fully completed booking form, the Council will make a fresh decision in response to such request upon a lawful basis.'

That statement, in my bold, issued by NCC on 25th June, is no longer is on their website, how come? I am puzzled.

IcakethereforeIam · 07/10/2022 17:58

I think the agreement with Julie was for that statement to be removed.

Glad it's not just me who thinks NCC are weasels.

CrossStichQueen · 07/10/2022 17:59

I think the reason why they were so publicly honest is because as many have said they were following Stonewall Law. Many amazing women have been publicly cancelled from talking at events and even their jobs with no recourse previously so Notts Council believed they were acting within the law.

Look at the event in Leeds a few years ago that was cancelled last minute by the council on the basis that women gathering and speaking about womens rights was transphobic.......but went ahead after the lovely Victoria ( I think) pub agreed to give over one of their event/tap rooms.

Leeds City Council pay attention to this recent ruling as you are still drinking the Stonewall koolaid 🤬🤬

RoseslnTheHospital · 07/10/2022 17:59

Yes, part of the judgement was to ensure that the original cancelling statement is no longer published or available to be published by them. Because it repeats the unlawful claims.

IcakethereforeIam · 07/10/2022 18:02

It's in the ruling at the bottom of the substack article. I copied it below, for some reason it'll be huge!

Julie Bindel has won against Nottingham Council
Live4weekend · 07/10/2022 18:02

I don't really think that is an acceptable apology.

I read it as we will find a legal way to ban you in future.

Still as captured.

Handsoffmyrights · 07/10/2022 18:04

Brava Julie!

NCC stop trying to erase women's rights. Misogyny is never a good look and your apology is given begrudgingly and without authenticity.

RaininginDarling · 07/10/2022 18:05

Good. Another brick in the wall.

FlibbertyGiblets · 07/10/2022 18:13

Oh sorry, thanks for explaining, cooking tea and mn-ing.

Rainbowshit · 07/10/2022 18:14

Great result but I suspect why will happen in future is that they will find less obviously discriminatory ways to cancel.

IcakethereforeIam · 07/10/2022 18:17

Link to NCC's apology on twitter:

twitter.com/MyNottingham/status/1578366816212033537?s=20&t=oscmfrKxMMiAeOKqy-yi-g

Loving the comments.

SuperCamp · 07/10/2022 18:19

Well done Ms Bindel, and thank you. Another legal marker in the ground.

However, The apology is weasel words. They say they were ‘procedurally unlawful’ and apologise for that. They do not apologise for wanting to ban someone for their (legal) views, and they do not say they were wrong to want to cancel JB, and they do not apologise for reacting as if she was some sort of hate crime on legs.

It is a legal win for the status of free speech but my guess is that all Nottingham will have learned from this is how to work harder at getting away with stuff.

Let’s not retire to the pub yet.

LadyApplejack · 07/10/2022 18:27

Oh, boom!!!! 🙌

Mummyoflittledragon · 07/10/2022 18:34

Excellent news! Someone on the Twitter thread made a comment that the next time, the answer will be to apologise and state the library is fully booked for the next 2 years. Would blocking her in this way be procedurally legal perhaps?

LangClegsInSpace · 07/10/2022 19:34

Excellent result.

They have also been told to pay the costs etc. don't know why they say they've "agreed" to do so.

They weren't told to, this never made it as far as court. This is a settlement agreed at the pre-action letters stage. 'Agreed' is accurate. And they have agreed to pay costs for things like travel, accommodation and cancelled tickets, not legal costs.

#Forstater is solid and says it's unlawful to discriminate against someone for holding GC beliefs. Nottingham released a statement saying 'We cancelled JB because of her GC beliefs.' There weren't even questions about the expression of her belief because she was speaking on a different topic.

Nottingham were so obviously in the wrong, they'd have been insane to let this get as far as court.

So while this is an excellent result, I think it was complete overkill to hire not only a specialist solicitor - appropriate for the pre-action stage - but also no less than three top barristers, two of them KC, from the very start. You only need barristers if/when it goes to court and even the most high profile cases we have seen have not engaged three.

There are two problems with this:

Firstly, the expense. We are all crowdfund fatigued. JB was careful to only ask for donations from those who could comfortably afford to support but even so ...

Secondly, it gives the impression that in order to fight unlawful genderist BS you need a big expensive legal team, which is offputting for ordinary women standing up for their rights. Sometimes that's necessary if it involves a legal precedent or it's a complex case, but this was a slam dunk -'The law says x, you have done y.'

Post-Forstater there will be loads of people who have straightforward legitimate complaints, claims and grievances like this one. We can't fund them all and most don't need to be expensive. It's not at all glamorous but a lot can be can achieved without spending anything through things like ordinary complaints procedures (escalating where necessary to regulators) and workplace grievances. Even straightforward ET's can be done for free. There are no court fees for ET, legal costs are seldom awarded and the tribunal system is set up for self-representing claimants.

IMO we should be doing a lot more to support women to advocate for themselves, rather than endless crowdfunding. We can still do the crowdfunding if/when things get complicated, especially where there's a legal precedent involved.