NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #6

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 January 2025 and is expected to continue for 2 weeks. The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton started giving evidence on 6 February.

Access to view the hearing remotely can be obtained by sending an email request to [email protected] headed Public Access Request (Peggie v Fife Health Board) 4104864/2024 and requesting access.

The hearing is being live tweeted by https://x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.is/xkSxy.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: https://nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5186317-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse

Thread 2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5267591-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-thread-2

Thread 3: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268347-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-3

Thread 4: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268942-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-4

Thread 5: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269149-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-5

From the telegraph article
The latest advice from the Judicial Office was issued in response to a recent ruling on pronoun use in an employment tribunal being heard in Scotland.

So some good has already come from Sandie's case.
I hope she can enjoy this small victory that women will no longer have to call their male abusers 'she' in court.

Thank you for this. I was unaware that NHS Fife had tried to get TT banned from reporting the case. So much for any commitment to transparency and open justice, eh?

Happy Saturday, Mumsnetters. I'm a member of Tribunal Tweets and it's been a rollercoaster of a week. I've dropped in from time to time to catch the vibe but the threads are growing so fast it's like drinking from a firehose.

There have been a number of requests and questions about how to support our work. We really appreciate that. You can become a paid subscriber on the Substack. The only perk you get - you can comment on articles and I respond to your queries. Substack prides itself on free speech and is largely backed by Marc Andressen.

We have been reluctant to use any of the 'buy me a coffee' type services. The concern is finding one that is insulated from mass reporting. A denial of service from mass reporting can lead to de-banking which is a worry for us.

The Substack raises enough money to pay our IT expenses and normal legal fees. We have contemplated a judicial review and appeals on specific cases in the past but did not proceed. If we did need to do something major, we would probably crowd fund for that purpose. We don't want to lose our amateur status if we can avoid it. And we keep hoping we will run out of cases to cover.

Happy to consider and investigate suggestions on one off donations.

Thank you so much for your interest, support, keeping the issues hot etc.

On behalf of all of Tribunal Tweets.

I have worked with several very very devout religious staff over the years in the NHS. With most I haven't explicitly canvassed or discussed their views but based on their place of worship and their involvement in their community you could assume they possibly held views that others would consider judgemental of alternative lifestyle choices. They may even be part of groups that actively letter write to MPs on things like opposing abortion or pushing veganism.

I did even work with a male doctor whose religious observance was such that he wouldn't take breaks in the staff room if any women were present.

It has never been a problem because these staff leave their private views at the door and offer care to all regardless of their protected characteristics. They continue to offer emergency contraception to the unmarried couple or PREP to the man who has injected drugs with a used needle, or to remove the chicken bone from a carnivore's throat..They can think their own thoughts and hold their own views without it impacting on their ability to provide competent compassionate care.

In the same way that I counsel my own children against becoming intoxicated to the point of being unaware of their surroundings, and would be so so angry if they were to drive a car while drunk, and I could be privately writing letters to support the new Tobacco bill to ban all smoking....I still care for those who are dependent on alcohol, who are brought in so drunk they're hypothermic and covered in vomit, those who have developed life limiting illness through smoking or killed pedestrians drunk driving. I care for them to the same professional standards as everyone else, I do not discrimnate.

No HCP are recruited in the basis of what thoughts they might have and how approved or not they are. They are however expected to provide care to EVERYONE without those thoughts and views impacting on the patient and their medical treatment.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear

But it seems you can make a silk out of a lot of sows' ears.

@Justabaker could you do what For Women Scotland do?

https://forwomen.scot/donate/

Thanks for all your typing!! I'm constantly amazed at how much detail is in the tweets when I'm usually struggling to make out every other word or find I drifted off and stopped listening five minutes earlier! You lot must be fuelled by intravenous caffeine!

'That's been asked about many of these Employment Tribunals and my view is that even when the defendents/respondents spot that they're on a hiding to nothing, or, at best, a Pyrrhic victory, they choose to fight on to signal to particularly constituencies that they're so wedded to the right ideological cause, they're willing to go down fighting.'

Blasphemy in the 19th century, modesty and purity in the 20th century and identity in the 21st century were enabled through through groupthink. Groupthink overrides logic and reasoning. I expect the decision makers feel scared to their core about stepping outside of the group, this is how groupthink works. It doesn't align with logic and reasoning.

There are a raft of statutory and mandatory measure in place to prevent group think happening. Employment tribunals are won through showing these measures weren't enacted.

To @Justabaker and any other TT volunteers on here, much gratitude to everyone at Tribunal Tweets for the invaluable live reporting. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to donate at present but hope to be in the future and agree I hope TT can maintain its amateur status.

That’s an interesting point. Maybe he did have problems in a previous post and didn’t keep notes. So arrived at The Vic primed to use notes and be hyper vigilant about harassment events. While that has helped provide evidence in support of his case - the counter is that it undermines his reliability - did he exaggerate the incident in the changing room from a robust conversation to a hate incident? Did he use the complaints process to victimise SP? The note taking in that context is not a good look

It was so interesting to feel the gear change, the shift in focus and the honing in on the actual issues that came as soon as NC started talking yesterday.

It was intangible but somehow experienced by everyone watching - the cogs clicking and the pennies dropping as anyone involved in the witch hunt suddenly saw things through a lens they hadn't considered, hadn't given any headspace to.

All the emotive language, all the lightweight magazine columns and blog posts quotes, all the "how did that make you feel" and the questions designed to make one gasp or shake our heads and get caught up in the thrill of the chase and the energy of the crowd......

With just a sentence or 2, NC swept all that away and introduced neutrality, professionalism, policy, law, structure, documentation...

And we all felt it, we all felt the bubble burst, the spell break for the witch finders. They all looked at themselves, their actions and then each other anew.

And there will be a lot of soul searching right now this weekend, and for many months, where they wonder how the hell they were part of this.

[merail] And that's all well and good when it's public money or funds that should be going into (say) global development analysis or healthcare services that underwrite it. Maybe the public demonstration of TRSoH and their proclaimed virtue means it is worth it to them. [/merail]

I've no idea what the financial impact was for GCC in re: Allison Bailey but that's one of the few 'private' cases rather than organisational ones such as SWE, CGD, a university, or branches of the NHS. I've no idea what it's done to the insurance for ERCC or similar.

Thank you, @Justabaker. You do incredible work and I’d be lost without your tweets.

I actually had CGD in mind when I made that post and thought that they were willing to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds, and damage their own reputation, in order that the younger staffers in the Washington office felt that CGD had "made a stand against the bigots".

Or men, even the ones with genderfeelz, could just be told No.

Easier and cheaper than overhauling all changing facilities.

They're told no, they actually accept they can't have everything they want, and everyone is sweet.

To be fair to her, she's just applied for and got silk. You're basically advised by those who know such things to re jig your profile to show you are working at silk level because your assessors will look. The wording of her profile is pretty much textbook since this is her year of the application.

Yes. Although it's interesting to see how events have landed (prior to Friday, admittedly) with people deeply sympathetic to DU / BU and haven't quite understood that JR's sympathetic talking through is not the end of DU / BU's contribution but that there is a cross-examination to come.

https://x.com/FeministRoar/status/1887963564100727165

I agree @NotMaroonButRaspberry.

The legal system requires objectivity and presentation of facts - kryptonite gender ideology groupthink.

The power/spell of groupthink, once broken, is very sobering for those who were caught up in it. Many do not have a stable enough ego to tolerate the realisation, and cling to their debunked thoughts.

The worry about the new guidance is that judges are encouraged to use "they" so as not to take sides.
How will anyone be able to tell when it's a super special "they"? Did no one think of the enbies 😥

I remember a couple of incidents from childhood that remind me of this, where I was involved in a group of children running away from excluding another, or part of a class making life difficult for a cover teacher.

It's all so fun, and you love being part of the group, and you egg each other on and feel you can't be doing anything too wrong because you're in it together ...right up until the moment an adult arrives and spells out out just how badly behaved you've been and how that felt for and impacted on the other person. And it is all of a sudden not fun at all and you feel ashamed, and wonder what you ever saw in behaving like that. And you have to acknowledge that even if it wasn't your idea, you weren't saying anything, you weren't at the front etc etc, you WERE there, you DID laugh and you did absolutely nothing to stop it.

These memories are from yr 7 max I'm glad to say. But I suspect a lot of adults in NHS Fife may be going through similar emotions.

You'd hope so wouldn't you? But the current track record of the NHS is pretty casual about women's rights to safety, dignity & privacy, safeguarding children from a niche adult ideology and conducting brutal medical experimentation on vulnerable children and young people.
All unchallenged by NHS staff it appears.

That is exactly how I felt. So well expressed. Thank you.

That would be AAS (unless your name is Angela Serenity Sozzel).

Unfortunately the evidence from other organisations is that gender identity fans never change. They may seek counselling if the judge uses hurty words when he describes their failures but they can never, ever, admit that they were anything other than wonderful.

It's all so fun, and you love being part of the group, and you egg each other on and feel you can't be doing anything too wrong because you're in it together ...right up until the moment an adult arrives and spells out out just how badly behaved you've been and how that felt for and impacted on the other person. And it is all of a sudden not fun at all and you feel ashamed, and wonder what you ever saw in behaving like that. And you have to acknowledge that even if it wasn't your idea, you weren't saying anything, you weren't at the front etc etc, you WERE there, you DID laugh and you did absolutely nothing to stop it.

These memories are from yr 7 max I'm glad to say. But I suspect a lot of adults in NHS Fife may be going through similar emotions.

The thing is, I can see why both DU and SP, and their supporters, feel that they are the 'wronged ones'.

The key difference is what is reasonable to expect in terms of 'inclusion'. In the playground, It isn't nice if you are not invited to play with a group, but if that group doesn't like the way you play, they have every right not to play with you. They shouldn't laugh and run away, they should just state that the game isn't open to others. The teachers should manage play times so there are enjoyable activities available for all children.

The above scenarios tough for everyone involved. It's an aspect of life we need to learn to navigate.

Exactly - Dr U’s own words were that he thought that SP was not communicating well with him (left cubicle of resus patient, asked him to do obs and the spoke to fellow nurse in front of him without addressing him directly) and that this had the potential to impact on patient care. There was no actual evidence of any impact at all. Given that professional competency claims are so grave making an unfounded accusation would be very serious indeed